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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010569" data-attributes="member: 18387">The Basics  Freedom City is a campaign setting supplement for Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds superhero role-playing game. A king-sized supplement, 192 pages long, it has  superb cover illustrations, and full color interior artwork Cost: $32.95. (Although Amazon seems to selling it for more like $26)  Freedom City is a simple concept, which the comics have used for ages. It's a fictional city, like Gotham or Metropolis or Astro City, which serves as a backdrop to the heroes' adventures.  This is intrinsically a good idea.  Using a real city as a setting can be exhausting.   There's always far too much research to be done and a chance that one of your players knows the actual city better than you do.                                         Nowhere in particular on the Eastern Seaboard, Freedom city is a community of about 4 million people, smaller than Miami or New York, bigger than Baltimore, perhaps roughly the size and age of Philadelphia.  It isn't meant to replace any real cities, and can be set anywhere in the Northeast. There are also brief suggestions on how to place it somewhere else.  After establishing a few ground rules about superheroes and their place in the world, the book details the history of Freedom City, from its founding as a refuge from British oppression (that's why they called it "Freedom City!") Through its role in the Revolutionary War, through the 19th Century, the Pulp Era, World War II, the comic book slump of the 1950s, the superhero resurgence of the early 1960s, the turbulent years that followed, on through the "dark, troubled" 1980s and finally to the present. At every stage it skillfully mixes the history of comic-book reality with real American history.     So, for example, the decline in superhero comics in the '50s, as well as the imposition of the restrictive "Comics Code" is here melded together with the House Un-American Activities Committee and its investigations.  Superheroes come under the same kind of negative scrutiny that comics did in our world. In the late '80s and early '90s, new "darker" heroes began to stalk the streets of Freedom City, just as they began to stalk the pages of our favorite comics.  This is all handled with real style and cleverness.  The writer's love and understanding of the medium are clearly evident.  As we learn about the history of Freedom City we learn bits and pieces about the rest of the world it is set in, but this information is always vaguer and more general, to make it easier for the GM to fit the book into their own campaign.  We move on to an overview of Freedom City in the present.  It's neighborhoods, restaurants, night spots, monuments, police force, vital statistics and prominent citizens, etc.  There is a wealth of information here, enough to use this city as a setting for a non-superhero game without it feeling thin.   A great deal of effort has clearly gone into giving this city the feel of a working, breathing metropolis. It's also full of in-jokes. The Police Commissioner's name is Barbara Kane (Barbara Gordon meets Bob Kane) there's a character named Adam Ward, and there are many other such little references squirreled away in the text.   NPC stats are given for things like generic police officers, as well as for named NPCs.     A section describes Freedom's City's underworld in some detail. Designer drugs are a particular problem in Freedom City and the Mafia has an old entrenched presence here.  This section is as detailed as the section on the city's prominent citizens, and at least as useful.  Other locations beyond Freedom City's confines are described.  Wisely, most of them are distant and exotic places that could be easily dropped into or left out of an existing campaign. We hear about Kanju Island, where giant atomic monsters rampage off the coast of Japan.   We hear about the mysterious city on the dark side of the moon, alien empires off somewhere in the depths of space, an alternate dimension or two, but we get very little about New York or Washington DC.  This is as it should be.  The longest and last section of the book is devoted to the heroes and villains of Freedom City.  This is where the book really shines.  More than fifty individual characters are detailed, all of them interesting, all them in one way or another an homage to classic cartoon heroes and villains.  Strange send ups of Johnny Quest, the Fantastic Four (as villains!), Batman, Superman and Dexter's Laboratory (?!) can all be found here.  This is really superb stuff, iconic yet unique.  It also provides more much-needed examples of how to make M&M's deceptively simple character generation system actually work.  There is a full color map of Freedom City in the back.  It's also available from Green Ronin in ..pdf form, for free.  What I Liked:  The production values are outstanding, particularly for a little house like Green Ronin.  The pages are glossy, the book is solidly assembled. The artwork is consistently fine and there is a lot of it.  Virtually all of the 55 odd heroes and villains have their own portraits.While the price may be high, there's an immense amount of material included, and the book itself is so well produced that it's clear your money has been well-spent.The tone of the work is very consistent, cheerful and "silver age" rather than dark and ugly. Anon-revisionist (or post revisionist) comic, it's somewhere between Zot!, Astro City and the Superfriends. A lot of superhero games (Aberrant, Trinity, Brave New World, Godlike) shy away from their comic book roots, and try hard to avoid even mentioning the word "Superhero."   Freedom City, on the other hand, revels in its cheesy origins. This book is lighthearted and fun, but it does not shy away from difficult topics. Freedom City has had corrupt mayors,  bad cops and racial tensions.  There is a white supremacist arch-villain who makes no bones about his agenda, Freedom City has a thriving gay neighborhood and one of its most prominent superheroes has recently been "outed".   All this stuff is just presented in a matter-of-course kind of way.  There is nothing sensationalistic or self-conscious about it.  These things are a part of the real world, so they're a part of Freedom City, too.                       What I didn't LikeThis book is nearly 200 pages long, and there's no index!  It's pretty well organized, but geez!  This is a serious limitation.  It also struck me as odd that while every hero comes with a villain option, no villains come with hero options.  This is particularly strange since it describes an alternate universe you might want to try adventuring in, where heroes are evil and villains are good.In ConclusionThis is a splendid supplement and a great addition to any superhero GM's arsenal. Whether you're just getting started or you already have a well-established game, it plugs in smoothly to most campaigns. Even if you aren't a DM, it's enough fun to buy just for the pleasure of reading it.    The price may seem a little high for what isn't really a core book, but it's well worth it.</blockquote>

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