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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011616" data-attributes="member: 1129">Freedom City is a campaign setting for the Mutans & Masterminds OGL game form Green Ronin, designed by Steve Kenson. It’s 192 pages of full color glory on slick pages with design handled by Super Unicorn.  Interior art is handled by Greg Kirkpatrick, Dan Panosian, Ramon Perez, and Craig A. Taillefer. The artists do a fantastic job here. They make the book seem more graphic novel than role playing supplement. The layout is two-column and uses color to denote special notes. The top of the page is a full color border with the chapter number at the end with the chapter title on the interior. For example, if I flip to page 70, I see chapter five, life in Freedom City.Freedom City is broken up into Seven Chapters with a separate section for Heroes and Villains. The first six-chapter focus on Freedom City. By breaking it into separate chapters, it allows a GM to look for specific things of one topic. Navigating the book, thanks to the three-page table of contents, that lists each subsection and it’s page number, is vastly easy, almost making up for the lack of an index.The first chapter is standard stuff. Premises, history, and ideas on how to use history in a campaign. These aren’t detailed notes about how Freedom City did this or that through the years, but it does provide the GM with enough information to think about using it in a historical theme. The timeline starts at well, prehistory, and moves into some really old times that are so ancient that they’ll really only mean something if you’re doing something like the Eternals. The city was founded properly in 1630 and the timeline leads us to nearly the end of 2002. Each entry is a few sentences long and provides the GM with the general feel of the entry. For important events, such as World War II, we have a beefier section. One thing I enjoyed reading was how things were worked to reflect many of the changes in comics, going from the Golden Age to the Silver, and hinting at the more dangerous waters comics now flounder in.Chapter Two, Freedeom City Overview, is more of an introduction to the city. This includes things like vital statistics, topography and climate, layout of the city, and an excellent breakdown of the areas of the city. This includes everything from Downtown and the Boardwalk, to Midtown and the Theatre District. Each section is brief, but includes place of interest, each place with the actual page number. For example, if you read about the City Center, you’ll see entries for City Hall, Federal Plaza, Freedom Hall, Freedom Public Library, and the Pinnacle Path Headquarters. One of the enjoyable features of the book are the True Super Stories scattered throughout it. These little stories give the city character and life. While not quite up to a graphic novel collection of Astro City, they do allow you to get a good feel for the setting and see how the fantastic interacts with the mundane.Other chapters have a deeper focus. Chapter Three, Government, provides a quick run down of City Hall, the current Mayor, City Council, and other factors. Chapter Four, Public Safety, includes material on Law Enforcement, Emergency Service, and the Judical and Penal Systems. Chapter Five, one of the largest, Life in Freedom City, is where the GM can start to quickly see how a campaign can come together, where ideas can be fleshed out. These range from noting where the public and private schools are, to where the museums are. From what papers are printed in the city, to what the local military force is doing here. Looking to give the players a night on the twon with a good restaurant and music scene? It’s covered. Many of the sections have a sidebar on Campaign Use to make it even easier for a new GM to determine how best to use these resources.Getting a separate chapter, The Underworld includes information on the drug scene, including statistics for mobsters, as well as designer drugs. It’s perhaps a little too short and doesn’t go into enough detail but it does provide the reader with a few streegangs, as well as information on the larger organizations like the Triads and Yakuza. No Dark Champions here though!While the main thrust of the book is in Freedom City and it’s history, it goes far beyond that. Chapter Seven, actually called Beyond Freedom City, includes different areas of interest by local. On Earth for example, we have Atlantis, Kaiju (Monster) Island, Lost World, Sub-Terra, and Utopia. Beyond Earth, we have Farside City, a tribute to the Inhumans of Old living on the Moon, as well as numerous organizations like the Grue Empire, the Lor Republic, and the Star Knights, who are another tribute to the Space Knights of old with their leader Rom.Past that is a section on Other Dimensions. This includes an Anti-Earth, where good people are bad, Freeport City, that’s right, the fantasy version, the Terminus, a place where DC comic’s good old Anti-Monitor could come from, but instead we have Omega, one of, if not the, most powerful villain, in an official product.For those looking to populate their world quickly, we have many samples in Chapter Eight, Heroes & Villains. Some of these are professional organizations of heroes like the Freedom League; while others are like that Fantastic Four of Marvel Super Hero fame in that their family first, as is the case with the Atom Family.  Those not interested in whole teams have a range of individual heroes, most of them slotted to a specific genre. Looking for the resident mystic master? Say hello to Adrian Eldrich. Looking for someone to take down street crime? Seek out Foreshadow.One of the things I love about these write ups, is that they feel very weighty. They include the standard stats, but those are very small in comparison with the rest of the text. Take Jonnhy Rocket. We get his background, a quote, personality, powers & tactics, appearance, campaign use, villain option, and his rogue’s gallery. This rounds out the characters far more than just having a set of statistics, and allows the GM to get double use out of every hero here if needed by having options for villainous behavior. Of course heroes can’t be complete without villains. Some of these ranges from the Crime League, a semi-organization of super villains, to the Factor Four, rivals to the Atom Family who resemble the Fantastic Four a little more as they have a beam that uses fire and a brick that resembles an earth elemental. While Professor Fathom doesn’t stretch per say, he is water so he can mimic such tricks while Slyph is the air master, the only one without ability to fully mimic her counterpart.I think one of the things I like about the book is how it pays homage to things that came before it while making it it’s own. Take Argo, an android designed to mimic super powers of those it studies. Can you say Amazo from DC comics? I knew you could. However, this android is stuck in his current form and while he has suffered defeat numerous times, he is currently in the Terminus, just waiting to be activated again. Can you smell campaign plot there? How about the Mastermind? A being that was there when a ship tore him apart and put him back together? Can you say Master of the World, one of Alpha Flight’s foes over and over?My favorite character though, just because I know any campaign in which he shows up in is going to be at it’s peak form, it’s epic “Zero Hour” if you will, is Omega, Lord of the Terminus. He clocks in as a PL 24 individual whose powerful all around the board. Not only does have has a natural Strength of 20, but he has Cosmic Power with an extra Boost Strength of 18 or worse, Disintegration. Definitely someone you don’t want to mess with. The full page illustration of him striding forth is a great tribute to all those old powerful cosmic foes that have shown up in one form or another.The book closes off with some tools including character sheet and full-page map of the city. This perhaps is the weak point of the city. Well, no, the weak point of the city is using the word Freedom in way too many of the things in the city. Outside that, there needs to be more maps of things like malls, shops, schools, and hospitals. The overview of the city is good, but could use a few more up-close views so that GMs can see how various neighborhoods start and stop.To me, the book has lots of spark. It’s very easy to read. It’s very easy to use right away. Is it 100% original? I don’t think too many things in comics can be. Does it present itself well? Can I pick it up and use it in game play? Have I enjoyed being a player in this vibrant setting? The answer to all of those questions is yes. Freedom City may need to cut back to the various titling of all things with the word Freedom, but it’s a quality book that anyone looking for a setting for any supers campaign, should consider.</blockquote>

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