teitan
Legend
For this review I am going to take a quick look at Freedom City for Mutants & masterminds.
Now, a product like this won’t necessarily have all the factors I mentioned in the previous installment because it is a supplement. This product is designed to enhance play in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign by providing the GM with a ready made setting and Non Player Character to use to either help his players or thwart them in their attempt to **deep voice** “defeat the forces of evil wherever they may be”. So, by necessity I will only grade this product based on Overall Fun.
Freedom City is one of those sourcebooks I was eagerly anticipating before it came out, almost too much because I was afraid it would disappoint me with the way I hyped it up in my brain. This can lead to serious disaster in most quarters.
Boy was I glad when Freedom City finally came out because it did not disappoint me one little bit and exceeded my expectations. To provide some history of the product, Freedom City was originally designed as a companion book to San Angelo: City of Heroes from Gold Rush Games and designed for the Hero System. In its earliest draft Freedom City was known as Century City but the name changed due to another product with a similar name from another company. What you get when you purchase Freedom City is a 190 page full colour hardcover book for $32.95. That is a bit on the pricey end but the content and artwork more than make up for the price.
Again, Green Ronin went with some great artists to produce the look and feel of Freedom City and one name long time comic fans might recognize from the industry hey day of the early 90s, Dan Panosian of X-Force and Prophet. Dan has really grown as an artist as samples from this book indicate, but the vast majority of the art and design here was accomplished by RPG art veteran Ramon Perez. His distinctive character designs help to provide a sense of history and archetypal look to all the characters. Perez is capably assisted in the art duties by the aforementioned Panosian, Greg Kirkpatrick, and Craig A. Taileffer. What really stands out about the art though is the eye popping colour from the colour staff.
Freedom City was written by MnM designer Steve Kenson and edited by Steven E. Schend, long time developer of the Forgotten Realms for TSR and Wizards of the Coast.
Freedom City is divided into 8 chapters: Welcome to Freedom City, Freedom City Overview, Government, Public Safety, Life in Freedom City, The Underworld, Beyond Freedom City and Heroes & Villains. There is a short introduction that I think is rather ingenious in a superhero rpg product, though not so uncommon in most other rpgs. Kenson presents Freedom City as if it were actually a world created for the fictional comic book company Aurora Press and Castle Comics, right down to a fake Castle Comics official license logo on the back cover.
The introduction starts with an overview of Mitch Gormley, the editor of Aurora Press’s many comics title and the book is dedicated to his memory. Kenson portrays Gormley as a sort of cross over of Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz which in retrospect plays a nice tribute to Schwartz who recently passed away. After a couple of pages dedicated to the fictional company Kenson goes into a few pages of how to integrate Freedom City into your own MnM campaign by providing hooks for including PCs in the setting or even how to use the setting for DIFFERENT games including Dungeons & Dragons!
Chapter One provides a very detailed overview of the history of Freedom City dating back to prehistoric times. It is presented in a timeline format as opposed to a dialogue or prose format, making it easier for a GM to integrate their own adventures into the history of the setting by providing a nice historical framework in which to work but I find the style of writing, the timeline, to be stale reading but of better use to a game than prose work. The history is a very intriguing piece nonetheless in that is gives you a lot of hooks to work with in designing your own adventures. The timeline is divided into many eras including a period reflective of the late 80s and early 90s and then the return of Silver Age ideals in comic books around 1992-94 in our real world. I thought this was a nice touch and contains many Easter Eggs for long time comic readers to pick up such as the mayor of the period in Franklin Moore. The easter egg bit can actually be said of the whole book overall as sites, buildings, streets etc. have comic inspired names be they creators, characters or titles that we have seen in the 60+ year history of the industry, a nice touch that provides a bit of fun to the book outside of role playing games.
Chapter 2 provides a nice look at the sites of Freedom City and important landmarks that make up the city.
Chapter 3 is a very in depth look at government in Freedom City and many NPCs that will become important in your campaign start to make their appearance such as Mayor Michael O’Connor jr. and the city council. In the few pages that make up the chapter you get a real feel for how the government of Freedom City operates and how they deal with superhuman elements in the city.
Chapter 4 covers the police, fire department and other public safety works in Freedom City. Included are bits of information on AEGIS, the SHIELD-like analogue for the world of Freedom City and its director, C. Horatio Powers. We also get some sample AEGIS equipment and a look at their nifty armour. This chapter also covers the judicial and penal systems in Freedom City, even detailing important NPCs like D.A. Daniel Durgan and Public Defender Caitlin Grenville-Thomas. Just throwing out some names here…
Chapter Five provides an overview of what life is like for a citizen of Freedom City and details all the corporations, retail outlets, prominent department stores (think Macy’s or Bloomingdales), labor unions, banks and other financial institutions etc. that exist in Freedom City. This chapter also covers topics like the religious demographics of Freedom City, schools (including the Claremont Academy, think X-Men and Teen Titans) and pretty much anything one can think of that would pertain to life in the city.
Chapter 6 gives a nice overview of the Underworld, or criminal element of Freedom City, including the stats for the humourous Toon Gang, a group of living cartoon caricatures of 1920s era mobsters.
Chapter 7 explores very briefly the world outside of Freedom City, looking at lost civilizations and alien worlds.
Chapter 8 goes over the various heroes and villains that populate Freedom city…
The book provides an interesting and highly detailed approach to the city, allowing for ease of use in integrating Freedom City into your campaign. The prose style is very easy and fun to read but the font tends to strain the eyes being a non-seraf font, it simply doesn’t flow across the page… think ARIAL font. There are several fun little aspect to Freedom City’s text that really stand out and take the product head and shoulders above similar products.
Riddled throughout the text are interesting sidebars that provide a sort of man on the street view of the superheroes that populate Freedom City or an insightful look back at an important part of the history of Freedom City including the Crisis-like Terminus Invasion and the first Appearance of characters like Dr. Metropolis. Sample NPCs like Doctor Tomorrow and the Centurion, Centurion being the first superhero in Freedom City’s history.
What Freedom City provides most importantly of all, and more than worth the price of admission are several excellent NPCs that can be easily used in any campaign. Mr. Kenson even includes interesting Villain Options for the various heroes and teams listed in the book that can really throw a hero team for a loop. Sadly he didn’t include hero options for his villains but who really wants more heroes when villains are what a GM really needs?
Just to maybe intrigue you more, how about I talk about some of the cooler characters in the book? Let me step up with an intriguing Flash analogue and resident speedster of the JLA/Avengers like Freedom League, Johnny Rocket. Johnny Rocket is a legacy character, picking up where his grandfather left off. Johnny is interesting not in that he is a legacy character but in that he is something you do not see a lot of in ANY RPG, let alone a superhero game… Johnny Rocket is an openly gay superhero. How is that for interesting and it fills a GM’s head with many plot ideas especially with a nasty villain like White Knight, the very symbol of prejudice and hatred in Freedom City…
Another very cool character is Mr. Infamy, who can provide interesting moral issues for the players to deal with. Mr. Infamy is essentially the mythical devil incarnate, tempting his prey with promises of power and fame, only to introduce that twist that we all dread… what makes matters worse is that Mr. Infamy is a plot device, meaning he has no stats for a GM to use by design, to further frustrate players, who must use their heads to outwit the master of deception.
Overall the book has a very cool modern silver age feel. The world has a since of fun but also accepts its darker side, and past, wholeheartedly much like modern comic books accept where they have been with an eye to the future. Many have compared Freedom City to Astro City in its approach, and I won’t fault those who do, I don’t think an Astro City RPG would really work as what makes that series special isn’t the heroes, but the perspective of the man on the street and how he sees those heroes. What makes Freedom City special is the way it embraces all the conventions of comic history and plays with them like a child with crayons, painting a four colour world with the wax that at once entertains and inspires one to higher levels of creativity in their game…
Now, a product like this won’t necessarily have all the factors I mentioned in the previous installment because it is a supplement. This product is designed to enhance play in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign by providing the GM with a ready made setting and Non Player Character to use to either help his players or thwart them in their attempt to **deep voice** “defeat the forces of evil wherever they may be”. So, by necessity I will only grade this product based on Overall Fun.
Freedom City is one of those sourcebooks I was eagerly anticipating before it came out, almost too much because I was afraid it would disappoint me with the way I hyped it up in my brain. This can lead to serious disaster in most quarters.
Boy was I glad when Freedom City finally came out because it did not disappoint me one little bit and exceeded my expectations. To provide some history of the product, Freedom City was originally designed as a companion book to San Angelo: City of Heroes from Gold Rush Games and designed for the Hero System. In its earliest draft Freedom City was known as Century City but the name changed due to another product with a similar name from another company. What you get when you purchase Freedom City is a 190 page full colour hardcover book for $32.95. That is a bit on the pricey end but the content and artwork more than make up for the price.
Again, Green Ronin went with some great artists to produce the look and feel of Freedom City and one name long time comic fans might recognize from the industry hey day of the early 90s, Dan Panosian of X-Force and Prophet. Dan has really grown as an artist as samples from this book indicate, but the vast majority of the art and design here was accomplished by RPG art veteran Ramon Perez. His distinctive character designs help to provide a sense of history and archetypal look to all the characters. Perez is capably assisted in the art duties by the aforementioned Panosian, Greg Kirkpatrick, and Craig A. Taileffer. What really stands out about the art though is the eye popping colour from the colour staff.
Freedom City was written by MnM designer Steve Kenson and edited by Steven E. Schend, long time developer of the Forgotten Realms for TSR and Wizards of the Coast.
Freedom City is divided into 8 chapters: Welcome to Freedom City, Freedom City Overview, Government, Public Safety, Life in Freedom City, The Underworld, Beyond Freedom City and Heroes & Villains. There is a short introduction that I think is rather ingenious in a superhero rpg product, though not so uncommon in most other rpgs. Kenson presents Freedom City as if it were actually a world created for the fictional comic book company Aurora Press and Castle Comics, right down to a fake Castle Comics official license logo on the back cover.
The introduction starts with an overview of Mitch Gormley, the editor of Aurora Press’s many comics title and the book is dedicated to his memory. Kenson portrays Gormley as a sort of cross over of Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz which in retrospect plays a nice tribute to Schwartz who recently passed away. After a couple of pages dedicated to the fictional company Kenson goes into a few pages of how to integrate Freedom City into your own MnM campaign by providing hooks for including PCs in the setting or even how to use the setting for DIFFERENT games including Dungeons & Dragons!
Chapter One provides a very detailed overview of the history of Freedom City dating back to prehistoric times. It is presented in a timeline format as opposed to a dialogue or prose format, making it easier for a GM to integrate their own adventures into the history of the setting by providing a nice historical framework in which to work but I find the style of writing, the timeline, to be stale reading but of better use to a game than prose work. The history is a very intriguing piece nonetheless in that is gives you a lot of hooks to work with in designing your own adventures. The timeline is divided into many eras including a period reflective of the late 80s and early 90s and then the return of Silver Age ideals in comic books around 1992-94 in our real world. I thought this was a nice touch and contains many Easter Eggs for long time comic readers to pick up such as the mayor of the period in Franklin Moore. The easter egg bit can actually be said of the whole book overall as sites, buildings, streets etc. have comic inspired names be they creators, characters or titles that we have seen in the 60+ year history of the industry, a nice touch that provides a bit of fun to the book outside of role playing games.
Chapter 2 provides a nice look at the sites of Freedom City and important landmarks that make up the city.
Chapter 3 is a very in depth look at government in Freedom City and many NPCs that will become important in your campaign start to make their appearance such as Mayor Michael O’Connor jr. and the city council. In the few pages that make up the chapter you get a real feel for how the government of Freedom City operates and how they deal with superhuman elements in the city.
Chapter 4 covers the police, fire department and other public safety works in Freedom City. Included are bits of information on AEGIS, the SHIELD-like analogue for the world of Freedom City and its director, C. Horatio Powers. We also get some sample AEGIS equipment and a look at their nifty armour. This chapter also covers the judicial and penal systems in Freedom City, even detailing important NPCs like D.A. Daniel Durgan and Public Defender Caitlin Grenville-Thomas. Just throwing out some names here…
Chapter Five provides an overview of what life is like for a citizen of Freedom City and details all the corporations, retail outlets, prominent department stores (think Macy’s or Bloomingdales), labor unions, banks and other financial institutions etc. that exist in Freedom City. This chapter also covers topics like the religious demographics of Freedom City, schools (including the Claremont Academy, think X-Men and Teen Titans) and pretty much anything one can think of that would pertain to life in the city.
Chapter 6 gives a nice overview of the Underworld, or criminal element of Freedom City, including the stats for the humourous Toon Gang, a group of living cartoon caricatures of 1920s era mobsters.
Chapter 7 explores very briefly the world outside of Freedom City, looking at lost civilizations and alien worlds.
Chapter 8 goes over the various heroes and villains that populate Freedom city…
The book provides an interesting and highly detailed approach to the city, allowing for ease of use in integrating Freedom City into your campaign. The prose style is very easy and fun to read but the font tends to strain the eyes being a non-seraf font, it simply doesn’t flow across the page… think ARIAL font. There are several fun little aspect to Freedom City’s text that really stand out and take the product head and shoulders above similar products.
Riddled throughout the text are interesting sidebars that provide a sort of man on the street view of the superheroes that populate Freedom City or an insightful look back at an important part of the history of Freedom City including the Crisis-like Terminus Invasion and the first Appearance of characters like Dr. Metropolis. Sample NPCs like Doctor Tomorrow and the Centurion, Centurion being the first superhero in Freedom City’s history.
What Freedom City provides most importantly of all, and more than worth the price of admission are several excellent NPCs that can be easily used in any campaign. Mr. Kenson even includes interesting Villain Options for the various heroes and teams listed in the book that can really throw a hero team for a loop. Sadly he didn’t include hero options for his villains but who really wants more heroes when villains are what a GM really needs?
Just to maybe intrigue you more, how about I talk about some of the cooler characters in the book? Let me step up with an intriguing Flash analogue and resident speedster of the JLA/Avengers like Freedom League, Johnny Rocket. Johnny Rocket is a legacy character, picking up where his grandfather left off. Johnny is interesting not in that he is a legacy character but in that he is something you do not see a lot of in ANY RPG, let alone a superhero game… Johnny Rocket is an openly gay superhero. How is that for interesting and it fills a GM’s head with many plot ideas especially with a nasty villain like White Knight, the very symbol of prejudice and hatred in Freedom City…
Another very cool character is Mr. Infamy, who can provide interesting moral issues for the players to deal with. Mr. Infamy is essentially the mythical devil incarnate, tempting his prey with promises of power and fame, only to introduce that twist that we all dread… what makes matters worse is that Mr. Infamy is a plot device, meaning he has no stats for a GM to use by design, to further frustrate players, who must use their heads to outwit the master of deception.
Overall the book has a very cool modern silver age feel. The world has a since of fun but also accepts its darker side, and past, wholeheartedly much like modern comic books accept where they have been with an eye to the future. Many have compared Freedom City to Astro City in its approach, and I won’t fault those who do, I don’t think an Astro City RPG would really work as what makes that series special isn’t the heroes, but the perspective of the man on the street and how he sees those heroes. What makes Freedom City special is the way it embraces all the conventions of comic history and plays with them like a child with crayons, painting a four colour world with the wax that at once entertains and inspires one to higher levels of creativity in their game…
