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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keeper of Secrets" data-source="post: 2011663" data-attributes="member: 13836">When I first saw The Bad Guys:  An M&M Superlink Supplement by James Thomas and Plain Brown Wrapper Games, I was pretty excited.  Here was someone who was attempting to put out a product for Mutants & Masterminds through their Superlink agreement. I fully wanted to enjoy this product and went in with hopeful expectations.  However, after I read it, I was left with an empty feeling.  Despite the author’s best attempts, the product failed to live up to my expectations and just fell short.Essentially, The Bad Guys is a PDF product detailing a variety of criminals and villains for use in the Mutants & Masterminds RPG.  I admit that you get quite a few characters for your money ($6.95 at RPGnow.com) but for the most part they are somewhat stale and uninspiring.  The actual stats and ‘crunchy bits’ do not seem to be very problematic, but that is not where the problem exists.  After each character are some ideas and suggestions with which to use the character and some of these are kind of clever and interesting, but many seem self-evident and obvious from the description.  All this criticism is not to say that none of the characters are without some redeeming quality.  For instance, there is the Death Angel, a nefarious and deranged Islamic fundamentalist terrorist, which bears a chilling reminder in today’s society.  However, beyond the obvious uses for the Death Angel, there are certainly some surprises and more depth than what the name and brief description.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Captain Valiant is a cynical and interesting commentary on American patriotism.  Captain Valiant is something of a right-wing version of Captain America who has essentially lost his mind in a whirlwind of patriotism and hype.  U-Go-Grrrl will certainly appeal to those who have a sense of humor as she is a celebrity who has allowed all the fame to get to her head and uses her abilities to confound the heroes.  People who have a fondness for Warner Brothers cartoons will certainly take a shine to her.  Helen Damnation, one of my favorites, is a dark version of Annie Oakley, returned from Hell to unleash her anger and frustration out on the modern world.  Finally, Vernichtung 5 (translated means something to the effect of Holocaust 5) actually places a new spin on Nazi sympathizers.  Rather than the overused Red Skull and Baron Zemo knockoffs, this is a group of youthful offenders more interested in racist music than they are in world domination.  However, with an interesting secret that is worked into their background, they may actually provide some exciting entertainment for a gaming group.   Whereas the above mentioned characters are sort of interesting, I’m afraid that for me, the interesting ones were far outweighed by the dull ones and some of the problematic parts of the book.  Perhaps for GMs new to Mutants & Masterminds, this could be a great product for those who need some of these characters to kick-start their campaign, but for experienced GMs there is not much here that really inspired or excites.  The vast amount of white space after each character is somewhat distracting, as are the rather silly names given to most of the characters.  The artwork is rather abysmal (but that is not something I really blame on the author – artwork is extremely expensive and I can certainly sympathize for not spending a lot of money on quality art).  But the characters end up falling short of expectations, especially ones such as Big John, a white supremacist that uses growth powers, Sicko the Clown, a demented clown who mostly causes trouble but stays away from lethal activity, and a host of others that are hard to get past the names, no matter how clever their concept or powers may be.  Names like Vampire Girl, God and Hammer of Doom just don’t do much for me and I’m fairly certain that my players would find them equally as odd.  Overall, I found that there was not a whole lot in The Bad Guys that did much for me.  Usually I can find something in every product that I can use later or mine for ideas but there just was not much here that I felt was worthwhile.  I certainly appreciate James Thomas’ efforts in putting together a product and doing what I can only assume is his best effort.  Maybe Thomas’ subsequent efforts can be a vast improvement.I give this 2 out of 5 stars.</blockquote>

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