Foes of Freedom is the latest in Green Ronin's
Mutants & Masterminds supplements, touted as a Freedom City sourcebook. It's a sturdy softcover with glossy, full-color covers and interior pages. Weighing in at 96 pages, all but seven of them filled with content,
Foes of Freedom retails for $23.95.
The physical quality of the volume is very good and the presentation even better. That Super Unicorn didn't do the graphic design for is immediately evident, but that's not a knock against Hal Mangold (the layout artist).
Foes of Freedom is very attractive. The art, cover to cover, is at least good and, at times, wonderful--including Christopher West's maps. A caveat to this general statement is that some of the villains aren't illustrated, while others are shown more than once--often with portions of a larger image appearing elsewhere in the book.
Foes of Freedom is divided into four major sections. Villainous organizations are detailed first, with solo scoundrels taking the second slot. Blackstone prison, a jail for super criminals, is given the third position. New rules take up the rear.
Seven organizations grace the pages of
Foes of Freedom, though some of these are mere villain teams and one shouldn't be in the organization section at all. (Four villains is a little small to call an "organization," as is one dinosaur, no matter how big.) Things-humans-were-not-meant-to-know take shape in the form of a cult familiar to those who have experience with Green Ronin's
Freeport--the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign, an apocalyptic faction of serpent people. Villainy takes a more conventional turn with the Foundry, covering the hateful ideals of robotic masterminds and their goal to dominate the world. The iniquity expands to global financial dominance and conspiracy with the ubiquitous Labyrinth. Following these world-threatening colossi, are some other groups including a section on monsters (not really an organization from crater apes (from the moon) to the embodiment of Freedom City's dark side--Scrap. Larceny Inc. gives some relief with a typical money-for-nothing group of robbers (though Larceny Inc. has a cool secret), but things get a bit darker with the Mayombe, a sinister voodoo sect, perfect for magic-focused campaigns. The section ends with the Psions.
Of the organizations, the Psions are the most intriguing. For this group, think of a leader that's Professor X and Magneto combined (more bad than good) with some misguided, mental-powerhouse grandchildren (literally). That's Psion and his scions (Psion is their surname). The tough thing is, grandpa has a mental superiority complex (psionic power is the next stage of evolution) and he has poisoned his children's children with the same arrogance. Add to the mix grandpa's work in human evolution and his need for very expensive equipment and materials. The work is for the benefit of humankind, you see. It's only right the Psions take what they need, because everyone will be better off for it in the end. Cooler still is the fact (missing from so many villains) that Psion believes he's doing good, and his grandchildren do too. Further, the younger Psions all have the possibility of seeing the error of their ways. Some are already having doubts.
Unlike the Psions, the rest of the organizations lack depth, to one degree or another. When a cult wants to destroy the world, as the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign does, it's easy to decide what to do. How does one deal with a similar cult selling voodoo drugs to the populace and making them into zombies? Well, it's once again clobberin' time. What can the heroes do when faced with robots, such as those in the Foundry, bent on the eventual elimination of humanity? Little else besides show those robots the power of flesh while seeking that elusive "off" switch. Only the Labyrinth has some deeper value (as the Foundry does to a lesser degree) as a world-spanning conspiracy from before the Common Era. Unfortunately, with both larger organizations, the GM is left with the hard work (see Critical Fumble).
Not that there's anything wrong with rock-em, sock-em bad guys, but some opportunities were missed here. A few cool alternatives do exist with the groups, like the Mayombe priestess's quest for youth and beauty. How Scrap manifests itself as an avenger for even the worst motivated of Freedom City's citizens is also nice. These situations are the exceptions, though, not the rule. And Scrap isn't really part of an organization. He's a solo villain.
More than a few of those grace the pages of
Foes of Freedom. Most are new and welcome additions the
Mutants & Masterminds game (and Freedom City's universe), while a couple are characters who should have really appeared in
Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1. (Blackstar, the fallen Star Knight, and Nacht-Krieger, the shadow Nazi, are two who fall into this latter category.) These villains range from creepy, such as the Collective (a being formed of hive-minded cockroaches) and the Goth-gone-bad Fear Master, to totally alien, such as the Curator (a Preserver artifact with collecting on the brain) and X-Isle (a sentient double of Freedom City, living in another dimension). In fact, little is predictable about most of these villains as far as style and origins go.
The only things that become monotonous are how most have escaped from prison one or more times and have been defeated already by this or that Freedom City hero. Further, few of these villains have any qualities that would make for compelling reasons not to simply mop the floor with them and shout, "Good riddance!" For example, Blackstar started out as a misguided warrior with truly good intentions, but instead of playing up this appealing feature of the former Star Knight, the author molds Blackstar into a "bitter and hateful individual." Moral quandaries, complex personalities, and evocative motivations (even for the bad guys) are one of the things that make stories about world-shaking superheroes attractive. Without these things, the game degenerates into a continuous string of meaningless fisticuffs with the only variance being what the evildoer can do and what he wears.
A few exceptions to this all-too-sweeping generality can be found in
Foes of Freedom, of course. Take Freebooter, a paraplegic computer genius with an android alter ego. Freebooter likes to stick it to The Man and spread the information and the wealth. That these actions are invariably illegal is of no consequence to Freebooter, and it's possible one or more of the heroes will sympathize with his motivations, if not the deeds themselves. Other exceptions include Dr. Simian (terrible name, but an ape out to save the world from human misuse is still a cool idea) and Megalodon (a biologist who becomes a ravening shark man due to his reckless quest to heal himself). These are villains that need more than to be thrown in a deep, dark hole.
But when some super-creep needs a windowless cell, that cell is best found at Blackstone Prison.
Foes of Freedom briefly describes the prison, including a nice map, and has statistics for the guards (actually a template), the warden, and chief of security. This treatment seems adequate enough even to base an adventure at the prison site, which makes one wonder why space was taken in the section's introduction to claim there wasn't enough space to detail Blackstone fully. Was there really a need for that? Not if it left the necessary room for the book's final section.
That section is full of new rules, most of which appear as abilities in the villains. New rules are usually a welcome addition to any game book, and they're even better when examples of their context are right there for viewing. The chapter also has a few items that don't really come into the main body of
Foes of Freedom, but are useful anyway. The Olympian template is one such gem. It'll help a
Freedom City GM flesh out the Olympian pantheon that seems so prevalent in the A-Terra universe--much like Marvel Universe's penchant for Norse gods.
Critical Hit
Foes of Freedom has plot hooks galore! Each and every villain and organization, except the Psions, has one or more (usually two) seeds for capers involving them. (The Psions have enough built-in angst that making adventures about them shouldn't be too much of a problem.) Even Blackstone Prison provides two hooks. Many of the capers tie to other Freedom City villains and organizations (this is a
Freedom City sourcebook), and a few even tie two villains from
Foes of Freedom together. While, of course, some of these hooks are obvious, there are more than 50 in the book. Sometimes even the obvious is good, though, because adventure ideas are often the hardest part of a GM's job. You won't be left wondering how to use a villain with
Foes of Freedom, and these tools help prevent this compendium from falling into the doldrums of just being another rogue's gallery.
Critical Fumble
With world-spanning conspiracies and super villains who get their "super" from their intellects, the easy part is making up the character and headquarters stats. The hard part, and one the purchasers of this book will be left to do for themselves, is playing the mastermind, creating complex schemes, or figuring out the relationships, fronts, networks, and power players within a group. Making a story that feels like the heroes are working their way to the spider in the center of the web isn't easy. In fact, with the huge and influential Labyrinth, a chart of companies, organizations, and relationships was really in order. A similar case exists with the villain Conundrum and his brilliant scheme. What does such a dastardly plan entail? Examples in these cases would have made this book exceptionally valuable.
Coup de Grace
Foes of Freedom gives everything its back cover suggests and more. It's a high-quality, beautifully presented book with enough power to knock unwary Freedom City heroes into the next reality (literally in some cases). A villain sourcebook, of course, is more for a GM than players, but playability takes another hit from the lack of constructive examples for complex subjects such as conspiracies and super-intelligent criminals. Still,
Foes of Freedom is worth your gaming greenbacks. Good stuff like this will keep your heroes cowled and in their tights for a long time to come. Will Freedom City ever be the same?
Score: 4.35 out of 5
This review originally appeared at
d20 Magazine Rack.