Always will have a fondness for this one. It's got levels, random chargen, random encounter tables, Jeff Dee and Bill Willingham art, polyhedral dice, a bit of algebra in chargen, etc.
It had that bit of oddness in that you were supposed to play yourself as a superhero. Imagine it: a bunch of geeks sitting around voting on each others charisma and so forth. Very realistic and I'm sure no one ever got their feelings hurt... We always went with random chargen.
We had alot of fun with this! It wasn't perfect, but it was fun and playable and combats went pretty quick. It had some other neat little touches like security clearances, the idea you could actually get reward money for capturing baddies, the training and invention rules, and so on. Had alot packed in that little rule book. The modules and supplements were pretty fun too.
Anyone else play this? What did you think?
Great fun with the original V&V. Anyone play the new edition?
The new edition isn't significantly changed. Different art, different examples and a bit more. It is mechanically the same as the old edition. I like V&V well enough. I won't run it anymore, but am willing to play it--a very solid and well thought out game, simple and flexible.
They are working on a true 3rd edition. I'm only hoping they won't make the mistakes of Living Legends.
Lots of modules, it seems to be a contest while they vie over the rights for who can get out stuff for it. (Between FGU and Monkeyhouse Games.)
What went wrong with Living Legends?
Quote from: CRKrueger;471704What went wrong with Living Legends?
It may be an excellent game, but V&V had captured something in its style of writing, its art, and its tone that is pretty unique. LL lost that somewhere.
it had a mechanical break round high agility. If you had very high agilty, which was uncommon due to the random nature of the power distribution, you had more attacks and as agility gave a flat damage bonus you could do more damage on each strike. So a guy with 30 Agility tended to a lot more damage tham a guy with 30 Strength.
I loved the use of Power in combat to soak damage and the fact that damage was related to weight as well as strength was okay although I feel it should have related to size not weight as the option to take super dense as a body power was just too great.
The other great bit was the description of the US legal system.
Quote from: jibbajibba;471718it had a mechanical break round high agility. If you had very high agilty, which was uncommon due to the random nature of the power distribution, you had more attacks and as agility gave a flat damage bonus you could do more damage on each strike. So a guy with 30 Agility tended to a lot more damage tham a guy with 30 Strength.
I loved the use of Power in combat to soak damage and the fact that damage was related to weight as well as strength was okay although I feel it should have related to size not weight as the option to take super dense as a body power was just too great.
The other great bit was the description of the US legal system.
Almost forgot about the "rolling with the punches" bit you describe. You had to be aware of the attack to soak it which made surprise attacks deadlier. Twas a good system to have high agility in indeed.
And yeah the legal system summary was a hoot. I may be wrong, but it seems like there was a rudimentary trial resolution system? My books are buried at the moment.
Did any of you guys play it as yourselves becoming superheroes? We tried it for one brief campaign. Not entirely satisfactory as I recall...
Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;471793Almost forgot about the "rolling with the punches" bit you describe. You had to be aware of the attack to soak it which made surprise attacks deadlier. Twas a good system to have high agility in indeed.
And yeah the legal system summary was a hoot. I may be wrong, but it seems like there was a rudimentary trial resolution system? My books are buried at the moment.
Did any of you guys play it as yourselves becoming superheroes? We tried it for one brief campaign. Not entirely satisfactory as I recall...
Yeah we tried playing ourselves but wasn't really fair on the other players as my stats were so high :D
To be honest no. We just shuffled in a 4d6 drop lowest dice model. We were playing it when we were 14 year old kids in a suburban British sea-side town playing ourselves would have been uber lame. We did transfer the idea though and played a Chthulu game as ourselves. You do get some funny arguments about skills and stats though that have influenced me in games I have put together myself.