Villains and Vigilantes

[Teflon Billy]

I had a character who was a telekinetic robot who could control mammals and had a magic cape of flying. I think he had lasers too. I just named him Super Robot, much to the GMs chagrin (c'mon, admit it, you can't think of a better name either!). My brother had a weather-controlling teleporter, he was going to call her "Sudden Downpour" but I suggested "Flash Flood."

We had quite a few disasters on that front as well. I rolled up a Bionic dude with Cockroach powers, Vibratory powers and a Magic Axe. I went with the name "Vibro-Roach" for want of a better name.

The randomness of power generation also produced two more guys for our team "Ultra-Paragon", my buddy Mike's character who had Invulnerability, Flight, disintegration ray, Super strength, heightened speed and Super agility.

and his brother Neil...

Who played "Infra-Red"...a dude witha pair of Infrared goggles.

And bck in that day, if you rolled a character...by god that was your character. No re-rolling no nothing.

It was quite a strange team we called ourselves "The Peculiar's" I think.

 

[lukelightning]

My default super hero names were combinations of "Super" "Wonder" and "Captain."

Super Captain. Captain Wonder. Super Wonder. Captain Super. Wonder Super. Wonder Captain. And best of all: Super Captain Wonder.

I figure if you have random powers, why not go with a random name?

 

[buzzard]

I used to play a lot of this game. Depending on the GM we either had some really over the top heroes, or some pretty whimpy ones. Of course it also depended on the roll of the dice. The nice GMs allowed you some rerolls if things went south.

buzzard

 

[billd91]

I played a lot of V&V back in the 1980s. Awesome game. It didn't allow the same finely tuned comic simulations as Champions was capable of, but it was a heck of a lot easier to deal with.
We loved the random rolling of powers. It really helped stretch your imagination to try to blend all of the powers together into some coherent whole. It also generated some very different levels of power, which made it feel like some of the more eclectic comic groups like the Avengers where Thor might walk down the same hall as Hawkeye. Kept the GM on his toes as well because he had to have threats for the high power characters as well as the weaker ones.
These days, I prefer Mutants and Masterminds but still hold a very fond place in my heart for V&V.

 

[Monte At Home]

Played it and loved it. There was a long period in the mid-eighties where my group played this a lot more than D&D. Captain Avenger was my character, but actually I GMed most of the time.

I remember how I laughed and laughed when I did the math and figured out that Captain Avenger, who was a blatant Captain America rip-off, could jump halfway across most states.

 

[scourger]

V&V is a great game, and I had a blast playing it back in the 80s with a wonderful group of friends. I remember my character well. He had a split persona: The Terminator with armor and a couple of other little powers; and Knightwolfe the lycanthrope with a ton of added animal powers. KW was silly. After I figured out that he could survive a nuclear blast, the GM suddenly imposed a wekaness to silver. THAT was a munchkin character, but completely within the rolls & the rules.

I tried to import V&V to d20. It was not well embraced by my current group. I think the powers translate very well mechanically, but it just isn't the same. Maybe one day...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, besides me and my eclectic group of friends, who played this game and loved it as well?

All right-thinking peoples.

Even today, I mine my old V&V characters for one-off City of Heroes ideas.

 

[Wraith Form]

My default super hero names were combinations of "Super" "Wonder" and "Captain."

Super Captain. Captain Wonder. Super Wonder. Captain Super. Wonder Super. Wonder Captain. And best of all: Super Captain Wonder.

I figure if you have random powers, why not go with a random name?

Most of this thread has been making me blow Diet Coke out my nose, but "Wonder Super" just about killed me.

Thanks, i always appreciate a good death!

 

[SWBaxter]

The randomness of power generation also produced two more guys for our team "Ultra-Paragon", my buddy Mike's character who had Invulnerability, Flight, disintegration ray, Super strength, heightened speed and Super agility.

and his brother Neil...

Who played "Infra-Red"...a dude witha pair of Infrared goggles.

Our guy like that - interestingly enough, also named Neil - rolled Heightened Charisma and a paralysis device as his two powers. So he ran around fighting Mammoth and Dr. Apocalypse and so on with a winning smile and a dart gun. He became our first ever radiation accident, before I'd ever heard the term - a misadventure with a runaway train left him horribly injured, so I as GM gave him the option of having his brain transplanted into an android body. He took it, and had a long and successful career after that.

 

[Allensh]

I just ran V&V last Thursday night, in fact.

I do have Living Legends and I frankly think it's pretty good, probably running 2nd to Mutants and Masterminds with me right now. You can create characters randomly, but it is really a point-based system. I ran a combat on Friday night after we finished making characters and the system actually worked very well.

Allen