SHORT ATTENTION SPAN VERSION: Five adventures suitable for Superhero Games. Excellent Buy for someone with Conquerors Killers and Crooks (CKC), good buy for someone without.
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Champions Battlegrounds
128 pages, Trade Paperback, Perfect Bound, Black & White
Retail: $23.99
Authors: Andy Matthews, Derek Hiemforth, Jason Walters, Allen Thomas, Darren Watts
Artists: Chris Stevens (cover), various (interior)
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This supplement is for the Hero System and does not include any d20 material. However, the basic premises of the adventures and support material such as maps are suitable for conversion into other game systems.
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"CB" is a hair over 1/4 of an inch across the spine. In addition to five adventures, it contains eight full page maps in the back of generally useful locations including an amusement park, a mall, and a park. Other maps of bases and specific locations are scattered throughout the book where appropriate to the text.
Also provided are character write ups for some robots, ARGENT Agents, a Crane, a Bulldozer, a Roller coaster car, a Honda Civic, Foxbatboy and Foxbatgirl (schizo sidekicks to the unhinged "villain" Foxbat, who is presented in CKC), an ATV, a normal EMT, a Mountain Bicycle, and a cop. There are also occasional "crunchy bits" inset here and there for things like bombs and deathtraps and other mundane everyday items.
The purpose of this book is to provide five adventures for the default setting of the HERO System Superhero line, aka the Champions Universe (but usable with some background tweaks in other settings). The adventures can either be run individually or as part of a larger metaplot featuring a new lower-tiered Master Villain who is covered in more depth below after the SPOILER warning.
What this book isn't:
* Not a Rulebook
* Not a Setting
* Not a How-to for Adventure design.
* Not an interactive DVD "game" that will drive you to hurl your DVD remote thru the TV Screen in frustration
What this book is:
* A collection of adventures
* A glimpse at pieces of the Champions Universe via the backgrounds of the adventures
* A pretty faithful treatment of some classic Comic Book type scenarios
* A great way to pass five or more sessions of roleplaying
General Use: This book is most useful to GM's of Champions Universe games. It's really not appropriate for players. Non-HERO System GM's that prefer some other system to play their superhero games with could switch out some names and villains and use the exact same scenarios in their preferred settings and systems.
As a side note, most of the villains used in the adventures are not actually printed in this book; they are statted up in Conquerors Killers and Crooks (CKC), the Champions Universe Villains supplement. Some folks see this as a flaw of the book, but I don't see it as being any different than a D&D adventure referring you to the Monster Manual(s) for the various monsters and such used. However, those who do not also have CKC will need to replace these characters with those of their own design, or from some other source. Some of the characters can be switched out fairly easily, but some of the characters are unique enough that it could present difficulties.
Cover Art: A very comic-booky cover depicting the iconic armored hero Defender swooping in to save a small child from a killer Jack-in-the-box with a "fricking laser" on it's head amid a scene of general chaos including several other killer toys including remote control WW2 planes with real machine guns and my favorite, knife-wielding teddy bears. The superstrong Ironclad is smashing something in the background, while the utility-belt-wearing dark avenger type, Nighthawk jumps into the fray, and the mystic Witchcraft squares off with the Black Harlequin on the back cover. The energy projecting rock star Sapphire, the last member of the Champions team is not to be seen -- probably signing an autograph or talking to her agent.
I really enjoy this cover immensely. Not only is it a great comic book style piece, but it is well done, and very accurately depicts the characters. The rendition of Black Harley on the back and the various killer toys illustrates quite clearly how a clown motif villain can be extremely sinister. Top marks; any company would have a hard time producing a better cover for a publication.
Interior Art: The high point of the interior art is the awesomely clean maps, done by Keith "Savage Earth" Curtis. Keith does most of the cartography work for HERO Games and it is consistently good. So good in fact that I'm in the process of commissioning some maps from him directly for my own nefarious purposes. The maps are plentiful and very well done; any GM running this kind of game could find at least one map in here to use in their own games.
The illustration work is generally pretty good too, particularly several pieces by Eric Lofgren. All in all one of the prettier HERO System books.
SPOILER ALERT: Players should not read below this line as some SPOILERS are contained.
Introduction: This section does a good job of summarizing the five different adventures and giving the skinny of then metaplot linking them all together. Basically, the essential premise is that the new Master Villain provided herein has a doomsday type weapon he plans to use or market, or whatever. He also seeks to make a name for himself in general. However, rather than go thru with his plans and be thwarted at the end by interfering heroes, he has decided to instead learn what the local heroes are made of ahead of time via a series of challenges engineered via manipulating other villains to do his dirty work for him. The plan is he'll take the data gathered on the heroes via surveillance and construct foils for each of them so that in the eventuality any of them become alerted to his presence later and try to stop his real master plan he'll already have countermeasures in place to deal with them.
From a rational, real world perspective it's a pretty boneheaded idea, as it effectively has a high degree of likelihood of tipping the observed subjects to the bad guys presence, and thus becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts. However, from a comic book plot perspective it's a sound theory, with vestiges of Arcade and Doom like thinking.
The new Master Villains name is Interface, and he's basically a full conversion borg beat down specialist in a toe to toe fight, but he's also a thinker with a host of skills as a plot device. Ill cover his specifics later as he is described in the fifth adventure.
A WALK IN THE PARK
The lead off adventure starts in a park which can be placed in the GM's Campaign City of Choice. The basic thrust of this adventure is that Interface has subcontracted a couple of solo villains called Utility and Mirage to set up a test for the heroes that will likely end with them being "tagged" with a radioactive isotope allowing Interface to track their locations. The plot device to accomplish this is a trojan horse style viral bomb.
There is also a sub-sub-contracted goon squad hired on by Utility and Mirage to beat on the heroes. It's not real clear why this last bit is included, since it is unnecessary to the general purpose of tagging the heroes, but it does fill out a play session and serves to distract players from looking too deeply into the purpose of the bomb itself so it serves some purpose.
The goon squad consists of several solo villains from CKC, Herculan, Lodestone, and Ogre, in addition to Mirage and Utility themselves. Basically a scrapper, a control specialist, and a brick. It makes for a pretty decent fight, especially with some surprises that Utility and Mirage have had time to litter about the area prior to the action.
On the one hand this adventure feels kind of random overall, though as a weakness IMO Interface actually met w/ Mirage and Utility and thus if they are captured or mind read some idea of his involvement can be gleaned. On the other hand because it's relative self-contained and without premeditation it can be slipped into an ongoing campaign on a slow week or as a segue; in such a fashion all five of the CB adventures could be interleaved into a GM's planned story arcs as part of some larger master plan, or to fill in weeks where the GM was too busy to put the work in on their own adventures. The later is the way that I used CB; as filler for busy weeks where it was either run a premade or skip a week.
The support info for running this adventure is pretty solid, including write ups for bike cops and EMTs and the bomb itself. Obviously the gimmick bomb could be replaced with a real bomb or some other timer based gizmo for similar effect if a GM were trying to mod this into something else, and the characters can be switched out individually or wholesale, particularly Herc, Lode, and Ogre. When I ran it as part of the storyline I replaced all five characters with characters of my own devising without difficulty and the adventure ran without a hitch.
I'd give this adventure 7 of 10 stars on a 10 point system. It's a low complexity plot builder. It has a specific purpose and it fulfills it.
LETS GO TO THE MAUL
This is a fun, kind of goofy adventure featuring the absurd Foxbat!, a Champions Universe send up to characters like Madcap. He's not all there, which is to say he's a total loon. He thinks he's a master villain in a comic book but he's really just kind of humorous. He's just competent enough to require superhero intervention rather than being containable by orderlies from Bellevue Mental.
According to the meta-plot Interface has manipulated Foxbat into attempting to steal a cubic zirconia on display in a shopping Mall. Interface has also tricked the super thieves known as GRAB into stealing the same piece, and has created a red herring with the authorities indicating VIPER is planning a big operation as well. The idea is to kill two birds with one stone; creating a chaotic and unpredictable situation in an environment where Interface can monitor the whole thing is useful in his ongoing attempts to suss out the heroes capabilities. Secondarily, the hard core no-nonsense Interface is offended by the buffoonish Foxbat and the quirky members of GRAB -- they don't measure up to his ideas of what a proper supervillain should be; thus putting them in a position to be beat on and arrested by the heroes has a certain cruel satisfaction for him.
However, in this particular case I think the guidelines for running the adventure individually with no connection to Interface is a stronger premise and thus I skipped this adventure as part of the story arc, leaving it for a "fun" stand-alone session for sometime in the future.
Foxbat and GRAB are described in CKC. Foxbatboy, Foxbatgirl, and the Foxbatmobile (a fancily painted but otherwise normal Honda Civic) are all provided in the adventure notes alone with detailed maps of the mall itself.
I'd give this adventure 9 of 10 stars on a 10 point system. I haven't run it yet, but that's because it's cool enough that I don't want to "waste it" -- I'm saving it for the right moment.
FATAL ATTRACTIONS
This adventure features the crazed clown Black Harlequin, a sort of Joker+Toymaster homage. The basic idea is Black Harley is a big fan of the super-soap "To Save The World". The actress playing his favorite villainous has one a "Sudsy" for Best Supporting Actress; this incites BH to homicidal mania -- clearly she should have won it for Best Actress, since the villains are the real stars of the show. Around the same time the new amusement park OMEGAWORLD, which features an area sporting the licensed images of the "To Save The World" program, is due to open. BH secretly becomes involved in it's construction and subverts many of the rides for his own sinister purposes. On opening day.....he springs his trap!
Interfaces involvement in this is minimal. He caught wind of BH's plans early on and worked some of his own surveillance equipment into the mix purely to collect more data. This minor involvement makes this adventure particularly easy to run as a standalone.
This adventure is hilarious, clever, and fun all at the same time. Also, unlike the first two adventures which are pretty contained, this adventure can easily occupy several play sessions. It is also excellent for large groups of heroes because there are so many locations within the amusement park with challenges to overcome that a group can spread out and deal with different things simultaneously.
There are numerous amusement-park themed threats, Black Harley killer toys, civilians to be saved, robots to fight, and endless opportunities for heroism (rather than just beating up bad guys). When I ran it I dialed up the lethality quite a bit (many civilians died, and several of the heroes nearly did), and turned it into a real meat grinder, but the basic premise is fine as is for standard 4-color play. If I recall correctly it took four sessions to play out the entire park, and was possibly the greatest adventure the PC's ever participated in. It was certainly the most media-praised and the heroics of the PC's in saving civilians from death traps like the sky drop Shooting Star and the Speed-like bomb on the out of control roller coaster were very definitive.
In addition to the traps and Black Harley, there are robot versions of four of the reoccurring villains from the TV show the park is based on, The Pharaoh, Hecate, Captain Thunder, and Powermonger and the heroes of the show as well. Personally I just used the villains, but used several of each one. Character sheets are not provided for these characters; instead a OPTIONAL breakout details how to take an existing character from another published work and modify them to make the villainous robots.
I'd give this adventure 10 of 10 stars on a 10 point system. It was fun, memorable, clever, and very well detailed. Excellent support material is provided for all of the death traps, and the traps were all different. Not only did the players have a lot of fun playing it, I had a lot of fun running it as the GM.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This adventure features Holocaust, a megalomaniacal mutant from CKC, and the Institute for Human Affairs (IHA), a political front for an anti-mutant organization complete with Minutemen robots (analogues to Sentinels from Marvel's X-Men titles).
The short and sweet of it is a new high rise is being built and the IHA has purchased floor space in the eventual building. Holocaust has issued an ultimatum; if the IHA isn't dropped from the list of future residents, Holocaust will level the structure. Enter the PC's.
I enjoyed this adventure for several reasons. For starters, while Holocaust is bad the IHA is pretty messed up too (though it maintains a legal public face). Secondly Holocaust isn't there to fight the PC's, he's there to destroy the structure, forcing the PC's to try and distract him and putting them on the aggressive rather than the defensive. Finally, there is an interesting back story in place and hooks to find out more about the IHA, bridging into other plot lines.
Interface's involvement in this one is simple; he made Holocaust aware of the IHA's involvement in the building and if Holocaust destroys it Interface will provide him with a list of the top 10 contributors to the lobby organization.
The maps, background material, and back story are all very well done. All of the floors of the building are mapped. I particularly appreciated the little details like providing write ups for a bulldozer and a construction crane, and the materials summary chart provided is a big time saver. It's also on a timeline, since the construction workers are kept on the job right up until the appointed time of Holocausts ultimatum.
Aside from Holocaust, some Minuteman Robots are involved; unlike most of the characters referenced in this book the Minuteman Robots appear in the Champions Universe supplement. Two mutants, Stormfront and Zephyr, both from CKC, are also involved by default but I opted to beef Holocaust up a bit and used him alone to help keep the action focused on a super powerful single villain.When I ran it I had Holocaust be very focused on taking down the structure rather than fighting the PC's, forcing them to keep throwing themselves at him in waves to distract him; this resulted in a very distinct dynamic that was really well received by the players.
I'd give this adventure 10 of 10 stars on a 10 point system. It was easy to run, memorable, and different from the usual fight fight fight.
DOWN IN THE HOLE
The conclusion of the adventure, this section is essentially a base raid scenario. The PC's find out where Interface's base is either by themselves or led by the nose by Interface himself. Whichever, the place is a big trap where Interface gets to use all of the data he's collected on the group to neutralize them preemptively.
Ill avoid giving out to many details of this one. Just suffice it to say that this adventure can be run straight, or dialed up for more gritty play. Assuming the heroes survive or otherwise make it to the end, Interface himself is a deadly HtH combatant sure to challenge most groups in any slam-bang slug-a-thon.
Interface himself is a pretty straightforward beater, with a gadget pool for extra tricks. He's solidly designed, and his gadget pool allows for some nasty surprises for the hapless heroes. Interface also has ties to ARGENT, making for a good plot bridge.
I'd give this adventure 8 of 10 stars on a 10 point system. It's a solid adventure, but it just reminded me too much of old-school dungeon crawls but with a cyborg instead of a liche. I was reminded strongly of Lyzandred the Mad, or something similar. That doesn't make it not good, but certainly less interesting than some of the more innovative adventures in the book. I would have preferred it if Interface went on the attack instead; infiltrating the heroes base or going after them in their secret id's.
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Summary: An excellent, well designed collection of adventures well worth inclusion in a superheroes campaign, particularly one set in the Champions Universe. An excellent bargain with reusable maps, and a new Master Villain, as well as plot bridges to other adventure opportunities.
Highly recommended.
