In Dr Rotwang's thread about games-that-don't-get-talked-about, CW Richeson asked me:

Quote from: C.W.RichesonWhat, in your mind, makes Villains & Vigilantes so great that it still holds up?

As I said then, I'm not too sure. I don't have any stake in proving that V&V is the ultimate supers game of all time, but I thought I'd talk about the campaign I ran from early '97 to late '98 in Perth, Western Australia. This was a very popular game with the group, and the only reason it didn't continue is that I moved across the country in early '99.

Now, many of you may know that the default set-up for V&V is that the players play themselves with added superpowers. This is actually the only way I have ever run it. I've often seen the notion poo-pooed online, but it worked very well for us. More on that in a bit.

I used to read lots of superhero comics (since about the age of , but I haven't bought any since about 1984. So my frame of reference is quite old-fashioned. I'm pretty solidly in a 70s/80s timewarp when it comes to supers. I don't take the genre very seriously, and neither did any of the others. So V&V, with its schlocky feel and old-time design/production values, suited us fine at the time. It's a 48-page rulebook with B&W illustrations, and it came in a box with a GM screen, an adventure, and a photocopyable chr sheet. I think I bought it in about 1983. I've tried a few other superhero games: Champions, Superworld and GURPS Supers, but I'm pretty sure this is the only one I'll ever bother running again.

Next up I'll talk about the group and what they were like. I think this is always important, and in the case of this game, even more so.

Two of the players (Brett and Ian) were guys I'd played RQ with since 1983. One player (Allison) was Brett's girlfriend and another old friend of mine, but she didn't start playing RQ with us till 1991. Another guy (James) was the brother of Glenn, who had played RQ with us at one time; there was also his cousin Ben and his mother's boyfriend's son Luke, all of whom were at least twelve years younger than the rest of us. Lastly, there was Dan, who we'd all known since c. 1984. So this was a pretty close-knit group who knew each other very well, and we'd been playing other games (Pendragon, Car Wars, Gamma World) as a group for several months.

That helped when it came down to statting themselves. There weren't any major disagreements about Strength, Endurance, Agility or Charisma. I came up with a diplomatic solution for Intelligence (nobody likes to be called stupid). I said "Look, none of us are geniuses and none of us are stupid. Let's say we give everybody a flat 13 for Int?" That worked.

I think it's fun to do the stats in V&V, and you'll only ever be doing them once per game (unless you really try to kill characters). A test for grognards: who can tell me the problem with the formula for determining Carrying Capacity?

In V&V you roll 1d6+2 for the number of powers you get; after which you can choose which tables to roll on for each power. You can see that it's not exactly a game built for play balance. A lot rests on the GM and group good will.

I'll give each of the players and the character they got their own post.

Brett: Mr Blizzard

Having worked out in his youth and having been a bouncer, Brett had some good physical stats. He ended up with Weather Control, Ice Powers, Heightened Endurance, Wings, and Teleportation. Okay, we reimagined Wings as slower Flight (he's got 'Secret Wings' written on the chr sheet). Later on he developed a tactic he called the Icey BM--he'd ice up all over and fly into things at maximum speed. Nasty.

Allison: Titania

Allison got an interesting pair of powers: Stretching and Chemical Power. CP is basically a make-it-up power, and after a bit of thinking and tossing things around I came up with the ability to turn her body into titanium steel a la  Colossus or the Metal Men. That gave her a huge Carrying Capacity in metal form (112 091 lb), which gave her great hit points, HTH damage, and jumping and throwing capability. The group's brick, without a doubt, which was very humorous considering she was the only woman (and a smallish one at that).

Luke: Magnetron

Luke got Lightning Powers (ie electrical powers), Magnetic Powers, Teleportation and Heightened Intelligence. He had a bit of a problem with names and settled on one of the schlockiest that came up, as he'd never been a supers fan.

The teleporting was a bit of a misfit for both Magnetron and Mr Blizzard, but they were determined to keep it. We came up with some technobabble about lines of magnetism and the electrical field of the Earth.

Dan: Goanna

Dan ended up with Reptile Powers: Armour, Heightened Speed, Regeneration and Control Reptiles; also a Mutant Power which he decided was Wall-Climbing. Visually, he became a huge, bipedal perentie. He proved to be one of the weakest in terms of raw power, but he was a clever guy and got around it many times.

Another one with name problems. Dan tried Mr Lizard, Lizard-Man, Goanna-Man and Goanna; none of which anybody liked much. We all liked the visuals, though.

Ian: Spectrum

Ian got Light Control, Heightened Vision, Hyperflight, Adaptation and Invisibility. Clearly, he was a master of light in various forms. His super-form was a shimmering humanoid shape of pure light.

Ian was a total comics freak and knew all sorts of obscure facts about all sorts of obscure Marvel and DC characters. he was in his element.

James: Bunyip

I've lost the chr sheet for Bunyip, but he was the worst mishmash of powers in the group. We almost rerolled him, but James decided to go ahead with it as it was. He later changed his powers, of which more in a while.

Ben: Firelord

Ben was a bit of a social anomaly. Like Luke and James, he had grown up with roleplayers, but unlike them, he had an attitude. His father was a high-ranking member of the Australian SCA and Ben thought he knew it all. We immediately started verbally beating it out of him, of course.

He rolled up Adaptation, Invulnerability, Heightened Strength and Flame Powers (doubled). A simple but effective combination that made him quite powerful on paper. But he was at odds with the rest of the group from the start as a player and as a character.

So, that was all the PCs at the beginning. What did we do with them?

I had certain ideas I wanted to put into practice.

1. Previous experience with V&V had shown me that a lot of the fun comes from the intersection of the players' real lives with the super-world. Would Luke tell his girlfriend? Would Brett tell his parents? What would they all do about their jobs? As part of this, I decided to run the game as close to real-time as possible; ie if we didn't play for two weeks, two weeks would pass in the game world.

2. I was studying a lot of politics and economics and I figured I might as well put it in there somehow. That affected the way I thought about the villains and the way the world began reacting.

3. I didn't want to emulate any particular comics world. I wanted these seven to be the very first superheroes in the world, and I wanted it all to flow from there. I also didn't want to constrain them too much--if they wanted to do naughty things with their powers, so be it.

4. Seven people that know each other all developing superpowers at the same time was too much to believe--unless they all got them at the same time. When were these seven people together? Why, at roleplaying sessions, of course. So my very cheesy idea was that alien scientists had irradiated the house one night as an experiment. They realised that something had happened when the cat developed laser eyes, but they didn't guess the full truth till later....

The players had their own input. Costumes were interesting--nobody wanted one. In the end everybody went with some sort of 'powered-up' form (ice for Mr Blizzard, fire for Firelord etc), so costumes weren't necessary. Nobody took having a team name seriously, and they never did pick one. Being my friends, they had an antagonistic relationship with the authorities from the beginning. They didn't cooperate at all--except for Ben, whom I lured with the promise of a high-paid government position. Lucky for him the game ground to a halt when I left town, or he would have got his treacherous arse kicked.

They pretty much ignored politics, although Mr Blizzard did blow in to the UN General Assembly one day to inform them that they would help out in serious natural emergencies.