Stand-Ins Printable Figures - Modern & Superheroes Set #1

[IDA_Guy]

Stand-Ins - Modern & Superheroes Set #1 includes figures for any modern, superhero, old west, or high school game. You can print a team of masked men, a slew of gangsters, or a single 15-foot tall ape. The figures include high quality art, with separate images for the front and back – no outlines or silhouette backs. Figures are scaled for most tabletop RPGs, including the most popular modern RPG in the world.

This set features 261 black-and-white figures, including Atlantians, caped heroes, mutants, high school students, gangsters, cowboys, soldiers, cops, spies, civilians, and even a rottweiler. Print as many as you need, as often as you need them. The B&W figures can be used as they come, or custom colored to match specific characters.

As a bonus, 77 figures are also presented in full color. Four superheroes are provided at various super sizes, both tall and small. A total of 350 figures!

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=-1]Now available for sale at e23, RPGNow.com.[/size][/font]

 

[Crothian]

Stand-Ins Printable Figures - Modern & Superheroes Set #1

It is to see some sets of paper figures come out for the modern and superhero games. These are paper stand ups that once can print from their own computer to use in place of miniatures for a more tactical combat experience in their role playing games. This product is very much like the other by Interactive Design Adventures. They also have a fantasy set and a sci-fi set of paper stand ins.

This product is about the art. The artists are Jacob E Blackmon and Marcum Curlee. These guys present about three hundred and fifty different figures in this book. Most are black and white, but there is some color ones as well. The art is good and there are many, many different figures. There are gangsters, cowboys, school kids, as well as many super heroes of many types and sizes. There are a few heroes that are presented at different sizes so they can be shown shrinking down or growing in size.

The color ones are nice and well done. There is a good mix of heroes and more general type figures like cultists, school kids, and soldiers. All of the color ones except a large gorilla are of the standard human size. I like the art and I like the look of these figures.

The books come to one is a twenty five meg zip file. Inside there are three different pdfs. The first is the cover which is a little under three megs in size. The second is the pdf of all the black and white stand ins and that files is a bit over seventeen megs in size. The final pdf is all the color figures and it is over five megs in size. The pdf does cost twelve dollars to get and one has to print these out which can cost a bit more for some people. It is nice that one can print out multiple copies of each one and select individual pages to print. But it can add up in costs.

One problem I do have with this is the generic superheroes. Each is named and I think it’s a little tougher to have a generic super powered person then say a generic troll. I would have preferred if they just had pictures of many of the standard super hero types and left the name blank for people to use for their own player characters and non player characters. Obviously it is not that big of deal to cross out one name and rename a figure if that is what someone needs to do. Another small problem I have is one of the characters named Copy Cat has six figures of her. Each one is in a different pose, but I still don’t see the need for six figures of this same super powered woman.

Overall this is a nice product for people who have need for these types of figures. The art is good, there is a wide range of figures in the genres, and it has the facilities to print out thousands of these stand ups.

 

[Psion]

It may be a while before I get to my review of this, but let me add two quick quips:
1) I was glad to see that the females weren't illustrated as cartoonishly over-endowed as in the fantasy set.
2) The faux-Sailor Moon school girls gave me a giggle.

 

[GameWyrd]

I think the Stand-Ins Printable Figures from Interactive Design Adventures are great value for money. The Modern & Superheroes Set #1 is no exception.

It was a clever move putting superheroes in with modern. If Interactive Design Adventures (let's just call them IDA) hadn't mixed the two together then we'd have had too many costumed heroes without plain clothes or too many plain clothes stand in figures for your average present day scenario. There's a good mix instead. All of the "modern" paper figures could be used either as cannon fodder minions, civilians, law enforcement agencies or in disguise heroes.

There are some other nice crossovers too. There are six school girl figures (no, really) and as you'd expect (hope) they're in the anime style. You could almost add another genre to the list that these Stand In figures cover. There are nearly two rows (that's 18) cultists and I've ear marked them for a fantasy game. ... Oh ... and I'm just looking at the coloured Stand-Ins at this point too! As with the previous series, the Fantasy Set are there two PDFs. One has about 80 coloured figures and the other 260 black and white ones. I think the coloured ones are many times more impressive than the black and white.

It's the black and white figures which gives the Stand-Ins their value for money. You're looking at less than 4c per figure - that's if you only print them out once (and if you slyly print them off at work where it's free). I intend to cut'n'paste a collage of the gangster figures, repeating the set of four as many times as I can on an A4 page and then print that out. I'll have an army of throw away gangsters! "Print an Encounter. Print an Army" is the catchy boiler plate that IDA use for the Stand-Ins themselves. You've the added advantage of being able to colour the black and white cut outs yourself and that's useful in any super hero game where costume design can be important!

As with the fantasy set there are more than just humans (and heroes) here; there's a Rottweiler (also handy for fantasy and horror), a giant ape and two larger standard size heroes.

There are no trademarked superheroes in here. You won't find your favourite comic book character. You will find many heroes which have clearly been inspired by your favourite hero or villain though! That's not a bad thing. It's the best of both words; you've figures which are good enough to use in your franchise setting and figures which can be used in your homebrew setting.

I think US $12 is worth it for 350 cut out figures. I wont use nearly half of them but I'll re-use enough of them often. Just watch that you have a beefy internet connection. The bundle of PDFs is nearly 25MB. Don't try and dial this up five minutes before the players are due.

* This Stand-Ins Printable Figures - Modern & Superheroes Set #1 review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[drnuncheon]

I suspect that "Copy Cat" is someone with duplication powers - so it makes perfect sense for there to be six of her.