Customer Reviews

Villains & Vigilantes, Revised Edition

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I miss this game. I was playing this when comicbooks had really hit their stride; John Byrne and Chris Clairmont were doing the the Xmen, Bill Willingham was writing and drawing the Elementals, Spiderman was on tv, Batman was bif powing on syndication, and Dungeons and Dragons was considered too dangerous to play. I still played D&D, but humored my parents by playing this in front of them; 30 seconds later I was hooked. The art, the original heroes and stories and you got to play them! What kid would not want that. Most games you were limited, this one had such promise, and just like in the comics you character need not stay dead. They could always come back more powerful or with different powers; or even come back as a villain! There were no limits! In D&D you could be resurected, but you were always the same old character or you were dead.....boring. Besides, in V&V you could lift cars, demolish city blocks, all while trying to save the day.....ok so heroes don't purposely destroy city blocks, but things always happen when Villains are around. So if you find this game anywhere, you should pick it up and give it a try......and Mr.Dee if you are out there reading this.......PLEASE BRING BACK V&V, now is the time for HEROES........finally!

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.

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.