Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion
Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion is a licensed Mutants & Masterminds product describing the universe of Dan Brereton's Nocturnals comic. The book is written by the comic's author and illustrator Dan Brereton in collusion with Green Ronin's Chris Pramas.
A First Look
Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion is a 160 page full color hardcover book priced at $29.95. This is actually fairly reasonable for a full color book.
The book is full color. The cover is by Dan Brerton and Alex Ross. The interior art is attributed to Tom Fowler, Ted Naifeh, Ronnie del Carmen, John Heebink, Kieron Dwyer, Phil Noto, Casey Jones, John Dunivant, David Hartman, Ward Shipman, Jay Stephens, Bruce Timm, and Brett Blevins, though several interior pieces are signed by Brerton.
The interior art is done with the somewhat sketchy style that came into vogue in the 90's - not exactly my style, though some pieces are appealing to my eye and you can see there is a professional quality to many of them. Some pieces appear to be sketchbook excerpts which I could have done without. There is also an all new 18 page comic "Spectres."
Interior cartography is by Rob Lazzaretti.
A Deeper Look
As mentioned, this is a Nocturnals sourcebook for Mutants & Masterminds, of sorts. For those not familiar with Nocturnals, the comic occurs mostly within a fictional California town. At first glance, the heroes of the setting seem like a group with a fixation with Halloween costumes and paraphernalia. And guns.
As heroes, the Nocturnals are a somewhat pulp heroic group with something of a horror riff. The central hero, Doc Horror, is originally from a dark planet in an alternate dimension, who is fighting against demons called the Crim who took over that dimension and are now seeking to take over ours. As for the superheroic elements, Doc Horror is a gadgeteer with a Mr. Hyde side, his daughter Evening or "Haloween Girl" summons spirits into toys she keeps in her plastic pumpkin, Gunwitch is a reanimated pistoleer who wears a witches hat and adorned by a stuffed bat, and so on. Basically, they are pulp heroes with a bit of a dark supernatural twist.
As I said this is something of a Nocturnals game supplement. The author doesn't quite see it that way. Brerton describes this book as a Nocturnals bible for Nocs fans in general, not just a game book. Of course, as gamers know, an RPG setting requires you to have access to more fundamental aspects of a setting that a reader would; it was this that scared J.K Rowlings off of an RPG license. But here, the author uses it as a selling point to a wider audience, promising access to secrets not revealed in the comics. Clever bit, that.
Of course this approach has drawbacks for gamer types who don't come from Noc fandom. Some of the contents of the book - every chapter features a sketchbook style exposé of various characters. Definitely stuff more for fans than gamers.
The book itself is split into 7 chapters plus an original Nocturnals comic between the fourth and fifth chapters. The first four chapters are entirely stat-free background materials, whereas the fifth through seventh chapters are game material.
The first chapter, The Story So Far, summarizes events in various Nocturnals comics, which should make the book eminently usable by those not familiar with (or caught up with) Nocturnals lore.
The second chapter, Meet the Family, introduces the major protagonists of Nocturnals: Doc Horror, Eve "Halloween Girl" Horror, the Gunwitch, Polychrome, Starfish, Firelion, the Racoon, and Komodo. Each character gets the better part of (M&M norm dense-type) page of text, and multiple pages of illustration for each.
Next Stop, Pacific City describes the city in which most of the Nocturnals action occurs. The chapter includes details about crime and specific locales, including The Tomb, the Nocturnals HQ, and various other locales. There are multiple maps of the city and a map of the Tomb.
The fourth chapter, Beyond Pacific City describes other locales and characters of the setting. This includes such remote locales as the Black Planet from which Doc and Eve Horror hail, Hybrids and Freelynchers, the Deep City, Heliopolis, the Hideous League and Unknown City, Pharoh City and the Nightshade School, Dry Marrow and Sherrif Wither Hades, Heela the Savage Queen, and (introduced in the new comic in this book) the Murder and the Circle of Night.
After the comic comes the rules material. The fifth chapter Freaky Talent, provides guidelines and rules additions for making characters appropriate for the Nocturnals setting. Starting characters in the Nocturnals setting begin at PL6 (as opposed to PL10), and some powers are limited (like protection) or restricted. New Feats like Packin' Heat make it so armed thugs are dangerous, and many of the remaining feats are related to gunplay, appropriate to the somewhat more "street level" power of this game. In fact, many of the conventions from Nocturnals could be used to make a game more "street level."
To facilitate games in the Nocturnals universe, in the case that the GM does not want the players to play the Nocturnals themselves, a selection of alternate pre-generated characters is provided, and illustrated by Brerton. The heroes are pretty cool in concept, if a bit close a parallel to the concepts of the original Nocturnals. Professor Raincrow, for example, is a gun toting Native American occult scientist, Widow in a unique being like starfish, Kane is an undead warrior like Gunwitch, and so on.
Carpe Noctem is basically the "running the game" chapter of this book. It discusses the influences that go into Nocturnals (mainly hard boiled pulp, weird science, Lovercraftian Horror, and Spagetti Westerns) at length, the themes of the setting inspirational reading, and alternate campaign suggestions.
The seventh and final chapter provides Mutants & Masterminds statistics for major Nocturnals characters and villains.
Conclusions
Existing Nocturnals fans should love this book. Doubly so if they are gamers. For gamers who are not Nocs fans (yet), the book provides a nice introduction to the setting - more than enough to go on - and good material for realizing the setting concept.
A bit of the book is consumed by material that is pretty but not exactly useful in game terms. Though the book is still a good buy, considering it is only $3 more than a recently reviewed black-and-white softcover book of the same size.
Overall Grade: B+
-Alan D. Kohler
