Villains & Vigilantes, Revised Edition [Paperback]

Jeff Dee (Author), Jack Herman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1982

FGU product # 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU); Revised edition (1982)
• ASIN: B0013JZSS6
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,363,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Iconic superhero RPG with fun and flavor, March 28, 2010

By 

Methylbromide "Book lover" (Northwest United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Villains & Vigilantes, Revised Edition (Paperback)

Oddly enough, although this game is going on 30 years old, it still has a strong following and one that is now engaging the newer generation of players. Why? Because it's fun! The rules are actually quite easy to learn, the writing is breezy and full of flavor, even while still being open-ended in the campaign setting.

You have your five basic characteristics: Strength, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence and Charisma. Charisma fills in for willpower as well as force of personality. Your typical character has three powers, or four powers and a weakness. A key here is that a "power" can actually be a grouped set of powers, such as Lightning Control, which provides an offensive energy blast, a defensive force field, and the ability to short-out or manipulate electrical devices. The ultimate balancing factor is how much Power (like an energy reserve) a character has. Powers, such as Lightning Control, which offer more options, cost more Power to use, so you make your trade-offs.

Combat is the iconic "roll a twenty-sided die to hit," and the damage-absorbing properties of attacks are built into the attack roll. This is handled by an attack-vs-defense table that changes the number you need to roll. For example, a hero trying to punch a villain has a much harder time "hitting" if that villain has Lightning Control defense active. If he does "hit," then he rolls his damage dice normally and causes that much damage. This is very familiar to D&D/d20 gamers, probably since both games originated in the early 1980s. However, this is not a d20 game, and many of the mechanics introduced remain largely unique.

There is a section on character background, and a quick-and-dirty random adventure generator. There is also a section on how the legal system might apply to people with superpowers, and what happens when they go around beating on each other and causing massive property damage.

The skill system is largely non-existent, with generic backgrounds like "Broadcasting/Journalism" and "Science/Research" standing in for anything more complicated. This encourages role-playing, but can be frustrating for people who like good clear rules for skill usage, or that really want to play Sherlock Holmes. There is a nice rule for Inventing Points, which is easily adapted to both creating new equipment, or coming up with new power stunts for existing powers (e.g. "My Magnetic Powers hero wants to spend an inventing point to learn how to ride the Earth's magnetic fields and fly.").

The core game is unattached from any particular campaign setting, making it extremely easy to adapt to any setting, or even other genres. Do a quick search for "Villains & Vigilantes" in your favorite search engine, and find a staggering number of fan sites that offer new rules, campaign ideas, books, characters, conversions of your favorite comic book heroes, etc. In fact, the publisher has dozens of products in the V&V line, and only a few of them relate to each other, but all can be knit easily into one consistent home game.

With deference to the used-copy sellers here on Amazon, you can buy an original from Fantasy Games Unlimited for the original 1982 price. Apparently, they have a lot of back-stock.

Jeff Dee and Jack Herman (V&V's authors) are currently publishing their new game - Living Legends - under the UNIgames imprint.

5.0 out of 5 stars Villains & Vigilantes: Top Notch Hero RPG, September 15, 2011

By 

Eric Taus (South Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Villains & Vigilantes, Revised Edition (Paperback)

Too simple in some ways, too complicated in others, but fun is the primary focus & sticky parts are covered. The system is easy once you get into the swing of creating a character/world/etc. Easy to install house rules, which are encouraged, but a total package if you don't like swaying from the rule book. It's an all-in-one everything. A must have for any RPG fan. A must have for any Comics fan. A must have for anyone that sometimes fantasizes about being a desperately needed hero in this world.