Charles Phipps
Explorer
Autumn Arbor is the official flagship setting of the Arbor Productions Mutants & Masterminds Superlink line. The setting book is a 200 page supplement that is filled with information about the titular city and its setting world (which I term the "Arborverse"). Autumn Arbor refers to the name of the Maryland based fictional city that is the home of the Arborverse's superhero mecca. It joins the ranks of Green Ronin's Freedom City as a place for player characters to fight crime. The book is not restricted to describing Autumn Arbor but the majority of the books contents refer to the singular city.
Getting through the generalities, Autumn Arbor is a visually pleasing book. The cover is of a quality on par with Green Ronin's own, in my opinion, and the interior art is consistently good. I've seen better portraits for characters amongst Super-Link Products but only rarely and it maintains a parity with its setting parent. The book is hardback, which is a nice change of pace even if it cost a little extra.
What's the setting mood? It's a super hero deconstructionalist setting. Designer Lee Szcezepanik Jr. opens the book with a description of how he basically came up with the setting. Effectively, it germinated from the idea about how a high profile divorce between a super hero and his wife might impact relations between the citizenry and his fellow adventurers. Sort a mixture of Iron Age violence, Modern Age self-awareness, and Silver Age trappings.
Super heroes are garish and silly, bystanders frequently die in their brawls, and just about everyone is suffering from a major personality defect. I get the impression Autumn Arbor is meant to be played with a strong undercurrent of melodrama where players are expected to get sued after they save the city and use their fame to score with celebrities. Thankfully, that suits my players just fine. You can do Astro City, Marvel, the Tick, Watchmen, and Ultimates in this setting though doing the Silver Age would be rather difficult.
At heart, the whole theme of the book is game masters thinking about all those things you're SUPPOSED to forget. If they do an optional rules supplement for the game I'm sure it'll include things like "matching speed so when you catch someone falling off a building, they don't go splatter against your invulnerable body" and "how much money can you make hocking super villains inventions."
The book provides a history of the Arborverse for the most part. Distilled down to its basics, a race called the Versi pretty much caused the universe to become unstable thanks to their temporal experiments. They thus go throughout reality destroying all races they encounter that reach a certain tech level. Their archnemesis' the Menzati respond by genetically altering countless primitive races to becoming "Neos" so they can serve as troops against the Versi. Atlantis is created, it gets blown up by the Versi (hereafter referred to as "The Purge"). Neos pop up occasionally from Atlantis' descendents and only start showing up in large numbers around WW2. Wackiness ensues as the law tries to cope with the advent of super humans.
The authors make one of their few stumbles in the books by attempting to make things slightly different from real world history. For example, because WW2 Japan has Neos, they can launch attacks on United States soil and conduct terrorist attacks. This, explictly in the book, results in Japanese internment rather than the pure racism that was the source in the United States. While I'm sure they were trying to make a modern parallel, it just came off in poor taste. It was just one line though out of a much larger book.
The "Comic Book Ages" are different in this book and I give them credit for it. The Golden Age is actually when super heroes are at their most accepted while the Nixon Administration is when they're hunted down like animals ala the Iron Age. Suffice to say, the Modern Age is basically where super heroes are allowed to exist but their enemies effectively just try and legislate them to death by making it HARDER to be a super hero rather than just outright illegal. The authors detail the laws regarding super heroes very clearly and its necessary for these kinds of plots.
Autumn Arbor, like Gotham City is New York by Night, is pretty much a hyper-charged New York City sized version of Baltimore. It's very much a corporate city as well with the Vanguard Corporation© owning it the same way Lex Luthor owned Metropolis in the 1990s Superman comics (though it states the Vanguard Corporation© is only the 2nd largest employer in the city. Given how the VC is treated as omnipresent like Pentex was in Werewolf, I have to wonder if this wasn't a misprint.
The book details streets, shops, and so on in the city in the same way that the Freedom City setting book did with maps included as well. If you like this kind of detail, I just sort of make things up as I go along, then its definitely something that will help your players get into the mood. We get the Mayor, the City Council, and numerous other public figures included along with the heads of the Mafia and their families. In most cases, the majority of their opinions are defined as to how they react to Neo rights. This isn't a small matter either, there's like 10,000 super humans in the city.
One major thing that I'd like to comment before getting to the NPCs is the shocking lack of homage characters. Aside from Stelleron, whom fairly explictly is set up to be the "Dead Superman" Christ figure, there's really nobody that is an analogue. Vanguardian fills Superman's role post Stelleron's death but he's actually closer to Captain Amazing of Mystery Men (except for actually being a hero). Likewise, the Daring Dynasty is a super powered family but its utterly different from the Fantastic Four/Power Pack. I confess, it took me a bit by surprise.
On the super hero side, there's the Sentinels of Society. The SOS team is an independent super hero team that sports the Vanguardian© while living in their Vanguard Corporation© supplied towers and having all of their civil suits handled by the Vanguard Corporation©. The SOS team is a wonderful bunch of super heroes lead by Dragonfly but its clear that they're not exactly capable of defending the city, let alone the world unlike the Freedom League. Vanguard© has its claws deep into them and they've all got huge personal flaws (and two are in their seventies). One nice bit is there's no token minorities. This is the first team I've noticed with three central black characters.
(and if you've noticed I love putting the © behind everything owned by Vanguard© then understand it's just because I love corporation--- Alexander Ramirez is an evil corporate Lex Luthor type but he seems to be the sanest man in Autumn Arbor at times)
The villains are the heart of any setting book and I give the choices here four stars. Rather than focus on world shaking villains, the designers instead create street crime that fights back against super heroes. The Gangs and Thugs of Autumn Arbor are mostly superpowered and it seems fairly clear the cops would be insane to try and engage them. Neo One is a self-styled Voldemort/Hitler figure for Neos, using the arbitrary pure blood definition, except he's just a gang lord. This brought a smile to my face as a lot of people fail to include many gang lords DO develop delusions of religious authority/megalomania in RL.
That doesn't mean archvillains are neglected. Lord Wyvern is a personal favorite. Arbor's version of Magneto/Doctor Doom is a all-powerful British mentalist who rules his own country (I love super villain dictators---I have four in Halt Evil Doer!). He enforces the peace in his country through his own awesome empathic powers. He's also a bigot like Neo One. Alexander Ramirez is a favorite character of mine as, irrational hatred of the Vanguardian© aside, he's the best leader for the city. Arkainon is your fairly typical mad Atlantean sorcerer with ties to Comic Book Adolf HitlerTM but you can't go wrong with magical mecha. The Anarchitech is my third favorite of the villains, there's nothing like a mad Doctor Octopus meets Abraham Whistler.
The only character I really dislike in the book is Nathan Peterson. Basically; Nathan Peterson is a serial killer whose psychic abilities lead him to establish a strong bond with the people murdered in Salem, Massachusetts. He believes he shall avenge the deaths of the people thereof and strike out at the Church for their sins.
Let's follow what's wrong with this; Nathan is a psychotic Wiccan (which I have no problem with anymore than a psychotic Christian), Nathan blames the Catholic Church when the persecutors at Salem were the most Anti-Catholic Protestants on the planet (and would probably approve of his later murders), and Nathan seems unaware that the people at Salem were not actually witches (Autumn Arbor does not indicate they were).
In short, Nathan Peterson is a ****ing idiot. This isn't a flaw in the writing. The text acknowledges that Nathan is a tremendous dummy. It's just its the kind of bad history and self-justification that makes the character deserve a tremendous beating. Given my players are tremendously brainy, I could never use Nathan without them wanting to strangle him.
I don't know why I wasted three paragraphs blasting one character out of a hundred but I felt that I really had to. While this review is already overlong, I still have a great deal to say and would happily like to comment on my other favorite villains (Maiden America, Xombehemoth, and Jessica Baker---whom I *HAVE* to write a book about) but suffice to say I'm very satisfied with Autumn Arbor and recommend people pick up the book.
9/10
Getting through the generalities, Autumn Arbor is a visually pleasing book. The cover is of a quality on par with Green Ronin's own, in my opinion, and the interior art is consistently good. I've seen better portraits for characters amongst Super-Link Products but only rarely and it maintains a parity with its setting parent. The book is hardback, which is a nice change of pace even if it cost a little extra.
What's the setting mood? It's a super hero deconstructionalist setting. Designer Lee Szcezepanik Jr. opens the book with a description of how he basically came up with the setting. Effectively, it germinated from the idea about how a high profile divorce between a super hero and his wife might impact relations between the citizenry and his fellow adventurers. Sort a mixture of Iron Age violence, Modern Age self-awareness, and Silver Age trappings.
Super heroes are garish and silly, bystanders frequently die in their brawls, and just about everyone is suffering from a major personality defect. I get the impression Autumn Arbor is meant to be played with a strong undercurrent of melodrama where players are expected to get sued after they save the city and use their fame to score with celebrities. Thankfully, that suits my players just fine. You can do Astro City, Marvel, the Tick, Watchmen, and Ultimates in this setting though doing the Silver Age would be rather difficult.
At heart, the whole theme of the book is game masters thinking about all those things you're SUPPOSED to forget. If they do an optional rules supplement for the game I'm sure it'll include things like "matching speed so when you catch someone falling off a building, they don't go splatter against your invulnerable body" and "how much money can you make hocking super villains inventions."
The book provides a history of the Arborverse for the most part. Distilled down to its basics, a race called the Versi pretty much caused the universe to become unstable thanks to their temporal experiments. They thus go throughout reality destroying all races they encounter that reach a certain tech level. Their archnemesis' the Menzati respond by genetically altering countless primitive races to becoming "Neos" so they can serve as troops against the Versi. Atlantis is created, it gets blown up by the Versi (hereafter referred to as "The Purge"). Neos pop up occasionally from Atlantis' descendents and only start showing up in large numbers around WW2. Wackiness ensues as the law tries to cope with the advent of super humans.
The authors make one of their few stumbles in the books by attempting to make things slightly different from real world history. For example, because WW2 Japan has Neos, they can launch attacks on United States soil and conduct terrorist attacks. This, explictly in the book, results in Japanese internment rather than the pure racism that was the source in the United States. While I'm sure they were trying to make a modern parallel, it just came off in poor taste. It was just one line though out of a much larger book.
The "Comic Book Ages" are different in this book and I give them credit for it. The Golden Age is actually when super heroes are at their most accepted while the Nixon Administration is when they're hunted down like animals ala the Iron Age. Suffice to say, the Modern Age is basically where super heroes are allowed to exist but their enemies effectively just try and legislate them to death by making it HARDER to be a super hero rather than just outright illegal. The authors detail the laws regarding super heroes very clearly and its necessary for these kinds of plots.
Autumn Arbor, like Gotham City is New York by Night, is pretty much a hyper-charged New York City sized version of Baltimore. It's very much a corporate city as well with the Vanguard Corporation© owning it the same way Lex Luthor owned Metropolis in the 1990s Superman comics (though it states the Vanguard Corporation© is only the 2nd largest employer in the city. Given how the VC is treated as omnipresent like Pentex was in Werewolf, I have to wonder if this wasn't a misprint.
The book details streets, shops, and so on in the city in the same way that the Freedom City setting book did with maps included as well. If you like this kind of detail, I just sort of make things up as I go along, then its definitely something that will help your players get into the mood. We get the Mayor, the City Council, and numerous other public figures included along with the heads of the Mafia and their families. In most cases, the majority of their opinions are defined as to how they react to Neo rights. This isn't a small matter either, there's like 10,000 super humans in the city.
One major thing that I'd like to comment before getting to the NPCs is the shocking lack of homage characters. Aside from Stelleron, whom fairly explictly is set up to be the "Dead Superman" Christ figure, there's really nobody that is an analogue. Vanguardian fills Superman's role post Stelleron's death but he's actually closer to Captain Amazing of Mystery Men (except for actually being a hero). Likewise, the Daring Dynasty is a super powered family but its utterly different from the Fantastic Four/Power Pack. I confess, it took me a bit by surprise.
On the super hero side, there's the Sentinels of Society. The SOS team is an independent super hero team that sports the Vanguardian© while living in their Vanguard Corporation© supplied towers and having all of their civil suits handled by the Vanguard Corporation©. The SOS team is a wonderful bunch of super heroes lead by Dragonfly but its clear that they're not exactly capable of defending the city, let alone the world unlike the Freedom League. Vanguard© has its claws deep into them and they've all got huge personal flaws (and two are in their seventies). One nice bit is there's no token minorities. This is the first team I've noticed with three central black characters.
(and if you've noticed I love putting the © behind everything owned by Vanguard© then understand it's just because I love corporation--- Alexander Ramirez is an evil corporate Lex Luthor type but he seems to be the sanest man in Autumn Arbor at times)
The villains are the heart of any setting book and I give the choices here four stars. Rather than focus on world shaking villains, the designers instead create street crime that fights back against super heroes. The Gangs and Thugs of Autumn Arbor are mostly superpowered and it seems fairly clear the cops would be insane to try and engage them. Neo One is a self-styled Voldemort/Hitler figure for Neos, using the arbitrary pure blood definition, except he's just a gang lord. This brought a smile to my face as a lot of people fail to include many gang lords DO develop delusions of religious authority/megalomania in RL.
That doesn't mean archvillains are neglected. Lord Wyvern is a personal favorite. Arbor's version of Magneto/Doctor Doom is a all-powerful British mentalist who rules his own country (I love super villain dictators---I have four in Halt Evil Doer!). He enforces the peace in his country through his own awesome empathic powers. He's also a bigot like Neo One. Alexander Ramirez is a favorite character of mine as, irrational hatred of the Vanguardian© aside, he's the best leader for the city. Arkainon is your fairly typical mad Atlantean sorcerer with ties to Comic Book Adolf HitlerTM but you can't go wrong with magical mecha. The Anarchitech is my third favorite of the villains, there's nothing like a mad Doctor Octopus meets Abraham Whistler.
The only character I really dislike in the book is Nathan Peterson. Basically; Nathan Peterson is a serial killer whose psychic abilities lead him to establish a strong bond with the people murdered in Salem, Massachusetts. He believes he shall avenge the deaths of the people thereof and strike out at the Church for their sins.
Let's follow what's wrong with this; Nathan is a psychotic Wiccan (which I have no problem with anymore than a psychotic Christian), Nathan blames the Catholic Church when the persecutors at Salem were the most Anti-Catholic Protestants on the planet (and would probably approve of his later murders), and Nathan seems unaware that the people at Salem were not actually witches (Autumn Arbor does not indicate they were).
In short, Nathan Peterson is a ****ing idiot. This isn't a flaw in the writing. The text acknowledges that Nathan is a tremendous dummy. It's just its the kind of bad history and self-justification that makes the character deserve a tremendous beating. Given my players are tremendously brainy, I could never use Nathan without them wanting to strangle him.
I don't know why I wasted three paragraphs blasting one character out of a hundred but I felt that I really had to. While this review is already overlong, I still have a great deal to say and would happily like to comment on my other favorite villains (Maiden America, Xombehemoth, and Jessica Baker---whom I *HAVE* to write a book about) but suffice to say I'm very satisfied with Autumn Arbor and recommend people pick up the book.
9/10
I love those ideas!
