Currently Smoking: Two joints in time of peace, and two in time of war

Valiant Universe: The Roleplaying Game is a licensed superhero game for playing characters from Valiant Comics, or possibly your own characters set in that universe.  Given that all of the art comes from these books, the quality of illustration is consistently high-quality, and the layout is rather spiffy.  The Introduction actually does a pretty good job of linking the "what is roleplaying" question to the game's subject matter:  "You and your friends are sitting around talking about comic books, 'cause that's what we do, after all..." and the discussion turns to Valiant's Harbinger comic and what one of the guys would do if he had the lead character's psionic powers.  The question arises because the people in the example, operating from the evidence of existing comics, can't confirm whether their ideas for how the character "should" do something would work.  That's what roleplaying games allow you to do.
However this section also explains how the Valiant Universe game differs from other RPGs: While it requires each player to write up characters with a background and game statistics, Valiant Universe dispenses with the concept of a game master.  While other RPGs can be thought of as improvisational theater, this game actually calls itself that. Based on this section (which includes the standard reminder on the tools you need to play) and the later rules section, this game greatly resembles Cosmic Patrol, a Catalyst sister game using the same system (below) and based on Pulp SF, which in turn resembles the quickly-cancelled licensed superhero game Marvel Heroic Roleplaying from Margaret Weis Productions using their Cortex system- which in its current iteration owes a clear debt to the narrative FATE system.

But before they get into the rules, the book gives us "Title Exposes" for the major characters/comic titles of Valiant's line.  The ones listed here are Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, Quantum And Woody ('Worst. Superheroes. Ever.'), Shadowman, and X-O Manowar.  There are also certain organizations such as the mystical Abettors and the Bretheren, the mad scientists of Edison's Radical Acquisitions, and the Harbinger Foundation, which has been involved in a lot of the crossover events in Valiant titles.
Each of these groups (including MI-6 and the Illuminati-like 'Sect') are described with what the game calls "Tags."  In the case of the Sect, for instance, Tags include "secret society," "secrets of immortality" and "multifaction cabal."

After this, at page 42, the book gets into the meat of the Game Rules, such meat as there is.  The game system is here referred to as the Valiant Universe system but is generically referred to as the "Cue System" in reference to this and other Catalyst titles.  Again, the system is premised on the idea that there isn't a specific game master, with the "lead narrator" (or Lead Narrator) role shifting from player to player during a game.  It is mentioned that players can agree to make one of them the dedicated Lead Narrator, or "appointed Lead Narrator" (or, game master).  Characters are explained in terms of sample Character Dossiers (starting on page 74).  The example they use here is Peter Stanchek, the main hero in the Harbinger title.  Each such dossier mentions the character's main comicbook title, and certain in-game "Vital Factors" such as Character Level, affiliation, a place to track Event Points (below) and the character's individual Tags- in Peter's case, the tags include "psiot," "Harbinger," "aloof," "challenger" and "troubled."
The first page of the dossier briefly describes the character's history and personality, and the second page gets into game mechanics.  Each character has a few stats, represented by polyhedral dice (or Stat Dice): Might (physical prowess), Intellect, Charisma, Action (general combat ability) and Luck, which is not a Stat Die but a specific number for each character, where any die roll that matches the Luck number for that character means an automatic success on the action, no matter what.  Otherwise Stat Dice work much like Cortex- a D10 Action means a better combatant than a D6 Action.  Each character also has a few- as in, less than six- Powers that represent their strongest capacities, which despite their name could mean natural skills such as a veteran's sense of strategy.  These also work on the die code formula.  Each character has certain Cues (usually quotes from that character in the comics) that can be used to start a certain action as defined in the rules following.  Each character has several Dispositions or personality traits that can determine how they react to certain situations.  Every character has the combat stats of Armor (absorbs damage), Health (losing too much of this inflicts 'negative performance effects') and one or two Weapons (powers or actual weapons that act as the character's attack forms).  This character sheet format is rather sparse, and deliberately so.

Page 43 focuses on an essay called "Superheroes: Accepting the Premise".  It attempts to answer the point that characters who are supposedly stronger or smarter than everybody else shouldn't be beatable, and yet often are.  The Valiant Universe RPG operates on the setting-based premise that "X is only as powerful as the plot needs him to be."  The essay points out that games that try to "lock those various powers into defined space" violate that central premise.  So for example, rather than saying that Bloodshot can lift X amount of tons, the Cue System says he can lift as much as the story needs.  Likewise Toyo Harada, the "almost godlike" mastermind in the Harbinger series, operates with the same sparse character format as other characters, even though in a more comparative-scale system the author says Harada's Action Stat Die ought to be a D100 instead of only a D8.  The system says that the current Narrator can use Harada's Plot Points to make sure he displays superiority (even if he's facing a normal soldier who likewise has a D8 Action Die) while on the other hand the archvillain's sense of hubris may allow another character to exploit his overconfidence and allow a "lucky shot" to be more plausible than just retroactively explaining a really good roll.

 How all this is supposed to work is dealt with in the subsection "Building The Story: Playing Valiant Universe".  A turn is a space of time in which each player takes their turn as Lead Narrator, giving a narrative of the current situation and making the die rolls for all other characters besides the PCs.  The LN begins the turn but is the last to act with his own character.
In this format a Scene is a series of turns within a larger game period called an "Event Brief," which is usually an entire game session consisting of more than two Scenes.  During a given Narration, a player can take a Cue from his character or from the written Event Brief and work that into his description to keep events going.
The author does admit that in this improv-style play, things can grind to a halt if players feel the need to deliberate what they're doing.  The book recommends certain aids, such as watching other improv events (including games recorded for the Catalyst website) to help newbies understand how it works.
Before getting into how dice are used, this section also goes over how Plot Points work.  Players begin the game with three Plot Points each and can bank a maximum of five.  Players with no Plot Points are given one at the beginning of the turn.  The LN is the only player who can award Plot Points.  The LN also accumulates a "Plot Pool" that starts at one point and has no upper limit.  Every time a player spends a Plot Point, the Plot Pool also receives a Plot Point.  Players can earn Plot Points for particularly good Narrations and can spend one Plot Point at a time to do any number of things, from changing the turn order to having a squad of soldiers suddenly attack, etc.  "The sky's the limit!"

When making dice rolls, an acting player's Base Die is a D12, added to his relevant Stat Die (Might for a feat of strength, for example) and any modifiers determined by the LN.  This is compared to the result of a D20 roll.  Certain powers may modify the acting dice roll; frequently a roll is listed as "Discard Lowest" on the character sheet, where you take the Power's Die and the appropriate Stat Die and discard the lower result.  "Keep Both" means you add both together.  And so on.  In combat, the dice mechanic is simplified, and two combatants compare the results of each other's Action Stat Die (with modifiers).  Vehicle combat is mentioned only to reiterate that it uses the same system as other actions and that rather than track the damage and stats of a vehicle, the players should remember the superhero premise that "any vehicle is as strong- or not- as the plot needs it to be."

Nevertheless, they still track how a character takes or absorbs damage.  Armor is listed on the character sheet as a set of pips and is in effect the character's hit points, or specifically how much damage he can take before actually feeling it.  Once all Armor is marked off by damage, any further damage goes into a flow chart that works not unlike the health levels in Shadowrun or White Wolf games, with damage above a certain threshold causing a character to take penalties to his Might rolls (said threshold basically depending on how tough the character is, since the charts vary from character to character).  When a character is Knocked Out (or usually when he's just 'Staggered') he is out of the action and his player can no longer do Narrations until the character is healed.  Usually Armor and Health do not repair in combat, though the game system allows for healing a couple points of either depending on how good a description the healer gives for his action.  Also in this background there are a few immortals and nanite-bearing super-soldiers who can regenerate.

In this regard, the book mentions "the comic book story arc."  It's where the author acknowledges that games don't always work like the genre they're simulating; in this case, most gamers prefer to go up against relatively easy "mooks" but eventually face a boss who can possibly (but not definitely) beat them.  The author says this is because there's a certain investment of time for getting people together for a tabletop game, whereas in MMORPGs guilds can expect to go up against a "boss" several times before mastering the combat, and in the superhero genre, drama dictates that the heroes go through several reversals before finally pulling through to win the day.  The author states that simulating this in a game could involve several game sessions of PC defeat, which isn't too entertaining.  Bills says for the standard forumula, the game group can set up their opposition at a gradually increasing level of difficulty, with NPCs being below the PCs in ability at first and then by the final Scene being at a level where the team will need to burn Plot Points to beat them.  However to simulate the true comic arc, the book recommends inverting this progression so that the NPC opposition is clearly superior to the PCs at first, gradually evening out until by the final Scene the PCs have the edge.  This touches back on the combat rules.  The standard rules do not mention character death, only getting Knocked Out.  Partially because this is a heroic game, and partially it's because just as the heroes are only as strong as they need to be, "Death is only as strong as the plot needs it to be."  Further it's pointed out that in the Valiant Universe, unlike most mainstream superhero universes, when a character dies, he or she *stays dead.*  So by default, combat can only KO a PC, although the book mentions ideas such as reducing a character's abilities temporarily or permanently to reflect a lasting injury that might have been fatal.

Next, this section gets to the process of making your own characters, which is the point that some other licensed games (namely the aforementioned Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) often fell down at.  The book reiterates its plot-based premise, pointing out that "superheroes and RPGs don't always make a lot of sense."   Since the system is deliberately intended to avoid hard rules and "direct comparison" the author advises potential players to focus less on making a character with X level of ability and focus more on what kind of character would be fun to play.
Once a player has his basic concept (including Tags) and character name, he gets into the creation mechanics.  Each player has a D6, two D8s and a D10 to allocate between the Might, Intellect, Charisma and Action stats.  Optionally a PC can bump his D10 stat to a D12 but then must make his D6 into a D4.  In this system, Health is a "secondary characteristic" to Might, such that having D10 or D12 in that Stat Die gets maximum health points whereas a lower die code requires you to mark off some of the points listed on the blank character template.  For Luck Stat, you just roll a D12 and mark that down or pick a number from 1 to 12.  

Characters also need to determine Character Level, which defines their base level of Powers.  Level is on a four-point scale of Sidekick, Hero, Super and Legend.  Valiant examples of each would be Alyssa from Shadowman (Sidekick), Archer from Archer & Armstrong (Hero), most of the Renegades from Harbinger (Super) and Toyo Harada (Legend).  In the power design system, each Level determines how many points you have to design Powers and the maximum number of those you can have (Sidekick has 15 points with 2 Powers max while Hero has 30 points and 3 Powers).  The sheet leaves at least one slot open in case a character can "create, discover, earn or be afflicted with a new Power during gameplay."  The die code of a Power is 2 points at D4 level and 1 point from there (so 2 points for a D4 Power and 6 points for a D12).  The little modifiers previously described, like a Power that replaces, adds to or is compared to the Stat Die roll, add to a Power's cost, such that a Power with the "Keep Both" modifier (roll the  Power Die with the Stat Die and keep both results) adds 3 to the Power's cost in addition to its base Power Die.  Keep in mind with regard to Power limits that the Valiant RPG doesn't have "skill" rules per se and that a Power in this system could refer to any trait that isn't reflected in the Stat Dice, for instance "Optimism."  This is at least a very quick way to build a character's abilities.  
To finish, a PC has at least ten points of Armor, to which is added the average of his Might and Action Dice (so if each was D8, that would provide eight extra Armor for a total of 18 pips).  A character possesses two (no more, no less) weapons, which usually don't do a lot of damage (4 points is a heavy weapon in this game).  A character's equipment is miscellaneous odds-and-ends like a utility belt.  As with everything else in this game, what a character has in his pockets has a Sonic Screwdriver-like potential to do anything, although as with the Doctor Who gadget it can't be assumed to do everything.  When creating Cues and Dispositions for an original character, the player should think of the kinds of things his PC would say in a given situation (the sample characters all have their Cues taken straight from character dialogue in their comics).

After this there is a brief section on creating NPCs (who should be redefined as 'support characters', given that their character sheets and design are more brief, and because in the rotating Narrator system, a 'villain' might be a player's main character).  After character creation, the book mentions character advancement.  This is where "Event Points" come in. Every time a player finishes an Event, their character earns an Event Point, and the group may have a team vote on which player made the game most fun.  That player gets a second Event Point.  PCs can accumulate these Points for various things, mainly upgrading their Stat or Power Dice on a progressive scale where bumping from d4 to d6 is 3 Event Points and going from D10 to D12 is 12 Event Points.  You can also add a new Power (if you have a slot) with an Event Point cost equal to its Power cost in character creation, minus 1 (so that a base D4 Power starts at 1 Event Point).

The remainder of the rules section is less than two pages on creating Event Briefs.  Which seems rather brief.  There are several of these in the final section and the book mentions various free PDFs online, but there is also a blank Event Brief template along with the character template.  Writing original Briefs is not a collaborative process the way the actual game is, but the book mentions that some groups may want to rotate the role of author or let one person specialize in it.  Their main advice is to use the Valiant Comics for inspiration, which will provide lots of starting material.  The sample Briefs are based on a two or three Scene format.  Most have only three Objectives for the characters, although it is stressed that a new adventure needs to take care in defining these, since these set the conditions for both victory and difficulty.  Advice here is to tailor the objectives for the group's desire for difficulty and game length.  And, if the author is still stumped, there is a Random Event Generator on page 203.

The remainder of the book includes the Valiant Comics character writeups, each getting a page of history text with the actual character sheet consisting of only one page.  After the main writeups you have abbreviated character sheets for mook-types like Sect Security Guard, prehistoric monsters, and a few "name" characters who don't appear very much (I liked the sight gag on the sheet of General Redacted).  The final section is the Event Briefs, which are taken mainly from the comics in question, such as the point when Archer first met Armstrong, Renegade raids on the Harbinger Foundation, and so forth.  There is also an over-arcing plot line called "Hunt for the Ages" dealing with the immortal family that eventually becomes known as Armstrong, Eternal Warrior and Timewalker.
 

SUMMARY

Valiant Universe: The Roleplaying Game seems to be a challenge to the premise of Hero Games' Champions and  successor games, which tried to simulate the infinite range of comicbook hero abilities by allowing players to design any effect conceivable but thus requiring them to define everything a character could do in game terms.  Valiant's system goes to the opposite extreme of taking concrete definitions as anathema to good play, but the limitations of this approach become pretty clear pretty quickly.  
In my experience, "free-form" concepts like this actually undermine spotaneity rather than encourage it, since you might get to go in any direction, but aren't sure where to go and how to get there.  As I said in my review of the Marvel Cortex game, that game and Valiant Universe actually have less structure than FATE, which is designed to work on spontaneous player direction of the action, but gives a better system of how to make it work.

Ultimately approaches like the Cue System explain why role-playing games usually do NOT act as improvisational theater.  It comes back to the central point made in the game's Introduction: Role-playing games, among other things, help answer the matter of what a given character should or could do in a hypothetical situation.  But if the method of resolution is essentially just collective agreement, why do we need rules for that?

On the other hand, this game has the excellent background setting and layout of Valiant Comics, and a light, easy character creation system (which alone makes it better than Marvel Heroic Roleplaying).  It might work for a group that's already familiar with the collaborative concepts it uses.  But to me, at least, it comes off as way too vague.

Excellent review. Thanks for writing it. Do you have a link to your view of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying?

Good Review. Did the game correct anything with armor values? The quickstarts had a funky damage to armor ratio. (A smg did 4 point damage and a thonged barbarian mook had over 10 points of armor)

Quote from: Nexus;778012Excellent review. Thanks for writing it. Do you have a link to your view of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying?

Stand by, I gotta dig for it.  But yeah, it is a good point of comparison.
EDIT: here - http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26213

Quote from: Adammar;778091Good Review. Did the game correct anything with armor values? The quickstarts had a funky damage to armor ratio. (A smg did 4 point damage and a thonged barbarian mook had over 10 points of armor)

Uh, not that I can tell.  The product I got from RPGnow is the one I reviewed, and now that you mention it, I did say in the text that weapons usually don't do more than 4 points of damage while Armor goes into the teens.  Which usually means that even 'mooks' take more than one hit to take down.  They mentioned that you can use narrative to pull stunts (like firing a SMG overhead to cause debris to drop from the ceiling to block the enemy physically) but again that's an example of the problem I have where the game relies on "winging it" instead of robust combat rules.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;778263Stand by, I gotta dig for it.  But yeah, it is a good point of comparison.
EDIT: here - http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26213

Thanks for the link

Sounds okay, actually, but probably not For Me.