Villains & Vigilantes. Great game or not?

[the grey man]

Did anyone here ever play Villains & Vigilantes? Man I loved that game and GM'd it for hours. I have hundreds of characters made up for it. It was so much simpler and immediate than any other hero system. My idea of playing though was strictly for entertainment and I kind of ignored the movement rate rules which probably made it less tactical than it could've been.

It's been years since I GM'd or even played a role-playing game but I still have great & fond memories and all my games stuff, which I dig out for a browse now and again.

My main Super-Hero team were called Power House. (Long before DC Power Company or whatever it's called) I still love that name.

Oh well.......:bounce:

[UltraRob]

V&V was indeed a great game and my copy got used to death, it did have a few problems with being a touch unbalanced (you could literally end up with superman and batman in the same team, leaving batman useless half the time...) and some of the powers were a little uber (Adaption, for example...) but for quick fun play nothing I've played beats it in my book.

Ironically enough, I bought my first copy of Champions (3rd edition, hot off the press) because the store was sold out of V&V when I went looking for a copy after playing it with friends the very first time. I love HERO, but V&V will always have a place in my heart. We even played the "play yourselves" option, which I've seen work with no game besides V&V.

Rob (who fell out of a crashing plane and died of at the end of that campaign...:( )

[RavensPath]

V&V is what got me started on super hero gaming. I played it in college with a friend and then got my roommate hooked on it. We spent hours developing characters and the world. (To the detriment of our homework). Three of us shared a world so we always had a game on tap.

At one point we ran a Hero vs Villians 5 on 5 tournament which was a ball. The three GM's ran the characters and we would randomly pick sites for the battles. (The villians won overall if I remember correctly.)

I then moved to St. Louis and heard about another super hero game (v.4) and joined a group. And have never looked back.

I loved the random character generation aspect. V&V will always be a great game, no matter what comes after it. My copy is long gone as I destroyed it with use, but I still have many of the adventures that I sometimes adapt to Champions one shots.

Love live the Vigilantes!

[proditor]

Never heard of it. :snicker:

Check out Lord Liaden and TheQuestionMan's theads on other stuff converted to Hero and you'll find that there are a lot of us who played V&V and didn't let it go just because we switched systems.

Lord Liaden's is here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23298

TheQuestionMan's is here: http://herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=732295&postcount=81

[Sketchpad]

V&V was kinda fun :) We also played ourselves in it ... in fact, we went up against Damian himself in our first arc ;)

[Supreme Serpent]

V&V was a fun system. Good game, but any system with a good GM and good fellow players is. :)

[CBikle]

V&V wasn't a bad game. The combat could be as complicated as Hero (but as easy to get used to as well).

Movement was probably handled better (the overall move was divided by your character actions).

The character design process was a lot more freeform, but like a lot of 80's RPGs, was locked into experience levels, hit points, etc.

[Enforcer84]

Combat was sometimes sticky, but I LOVED V&V Like Proditor I converted many V&V characters to HERO. Unlike him I don't put them on the web because I suck.

[proditor]

Combat was sometimes sticky, but I LOVED V&V Like Proditor I converted many V&V characters to HERO. Unlike him I don't put them on the web because I suck.
I've been meaning to talk to you about web space BTW.

And no one ever pointed out that the Robot from Death Duel has messed up formatting until I clicked on it like yesterday....

Ah well, something else to add to the ever growing list.

[Hugh Neilson]

I found V & V: the game not "great" at all. The system was not intuitive, nor well explained. I didn't find it played very well, in my limited work with the system. The level system left minimal room for actual character growth and changes.

However, V & V: the ideas was terrific. The modules had a real four colour supers feel to them and, for the most part, were good, entertaining scenarios with creative characters.

I've used a lot of the source material in Champions games as a result, but I'd never suggest using the V&V "engine" for a game.

[OddHat]

I love V&V. It was my first post D&D RPG, and I and my friends played it to death.

We only switched to Champions because my co-GM was sick of my munchkin V&V heroes, and wanted to try a new system. :)

Fantastic modules and villains, but Champions beat it hands down when it came to character creation.

[Hermit]

The thing I liked about V&V were the little bits, like that great chart on random storylines (Including Revoltin' Developments), the occupation list, and so on.

Crisis at Crusader Citadel was a great campaign starter. :)

[Enforcer84]

I love V&V. It was my first post D&D RPG, and I and my friends played it to death.

We only switched to Champions because my co-GM was sick of my munchkin V&V heroes, and wanted to try a new system. :)

Fantastic modules and villains, but Champions beat it hands down when it came to character creation.
You showed him didn't you! :)

[OddHat]

You showed him didn't you! :)

Champions allowed me to reach heights of munchkinim I had ne'er dreamed o' afore.

I was Home. :)

[starblaze]

V&V was my first superhero game, and I did have alot of fun playing it until I found Hero way back in 81' and pretty much ended up playing that instead. I preferred the point system where you didn't have such a balance issue like you did with V&V and Marvel Superheroes. I ran Death Duel with the Destroyers but never got around to the Dr Apocalypse adventure.

Now here is a question for you guys. How many played the 1st Edition of V&V? The one with the origin types?

[starblaze]

And can you tell me who your first character was?

[Sketchpad]

And can you tell me who your first character was?
I didn't play 1st ed V&V, but rather I started with 2nd ed. My first character was myself as a mutant who had flame powers, superstrength, super endurance, claws and teleportation. As flaws, he had reduced Charisma (as he was odd looking) and light-blindness

[Enforcer84]

Ofcourse my first character was myself!

I played Osmium Gold: I had Transrformation A (Power activation) Chemical Power (Osmium Steel Body: X5 weight, +10 Endurance, 10 pts Invulnerability), Heightened Strength B (twice) +27 STR, and my weakness was Low Self Control (I had a tendancy to transform back and forth to steel when stressed, squishy when unconscious)

[Michael Hopcroft]

In coillege I once modeled several media characters of the period, such as He-Man, for V&V. I am missing those writeups. Some things you needed a spreadhseet to figure out, but it was a nice game.

I still have a copy opf V&V, actually.

Jeff Dee has a new game out, Living Legends, which has actually been in the works for the better part of a decade. But I'm still used to B&V.

\DireThruRPG still has a substantial amopunt of V&V material for sale on its website IIRC. And the game does still have a devopted following outside of the small cult of personality surrounding Jeff Dee.

[Blue]

It wasn't as easy to design new powers, because things were so arbitrary, but if you were wiling to simply reuse all the same powers, it was a lot of fun.

I have fond memories of Death Duel with he Destroyers.

[Sketchpad]

Keep in mind that Jeff Dee has finally been marketing Living Legends, a point based system that's the grandchild of V&V ... check out the Villians & Vigilantes Home (http://www.villainsandvigilantes.com/) for more info :D

[Enforcer84]

It wasn't as easy to design new powers, because things were so arbitrary, but if you were wiling to simply reuse all the same powers, it was a lot of fun.

I have fond memories of Death Duel with he Destroyers.
We worked out limits on the "open ended powers" as well as min/max limits on regular powers. (there was a line in the powers catagory that encouraged GMs to work with players if they happened to "luck" into 1 or 2 powers.) basically as long as we stayed in those limits the characters were more or less compatable and it was a lot easier to gague powers.

[CBikle]

On a side note, I really remember liking the "Villains & Vigilantes" comic put out by Eclipse in the mid 80's.

It was based on the Crisis at Crusaders Citadel introductory module. I believe it was written by Jeff Herman. Very fun and fast-paced and had sort of a Giffen-Dematteis era JLA feel to it even though it predated it.

[the grey man]

I played V & V to death and to my mind it was a far superior system to Champions. In pretty much all departments I felt. Characters were easy to create, I invented/converted rules to make more sense. Fighting was easy & quick, I just loved it.

With Champions you could spend 3 hours inventing one character & I couldn't get on with the combat system.

My friend spent hours making up a character called Bobcat & for his first battle I put him against a villain called Civet. I was expecting a hack & slash drawn out battle of Wolverine vs Sabretooth proportions. Instead it went something like this. 'Right Civet goes first, she claws at you...she hits...roll 2d6 Body Claw damage....oh you're dead!!! Damn let's go back to V & V instead!:doi:

But then maybe I just like to be contrary as I also far prefered a little known system called Dragon Warriors to the multi-mega selling worldwide phenomenon known as D & D.

[rjcurrie]

V&V First Edition was the first superhero RPG I played. I think my first character was Silver Bullet, a flying speedster who was a postman named Peter Orson Box (or P.O. Box) in his non-hero ID. I don't remember his origin. We never did the "play yourself" thing but rather rolled 3d6 for stats from the very beginning. It's always been my theory that all GMs have one game at which they really excel -- one which they are passionate about and seem to innately understand. For my friend (and then roommate) Charles, it was V&V.

It was a fun game but I never liked random generation of superheroes. I was much happier when we found first Superworld (in the original Worlds of Wonder format) and then Champions. But we still played V&V 2nd edition occasionally, because Charles would want to run a campaign and he was good at running the system.

[rjcurrie]

I played V & V to death and to my mind it was a far superior system to Champions. In pretty much all departments I felt. Characters were easy to create, I invented/converted rules to make more sense. Fighting was easy & quick, I just loved it.

With Champions you could spend 3 hours inventing one character & I couldn't get on with the combat system.



Whereas I felt just the opposite. I've always found random generation of superheroes completely unsatisfying and there were things about V&V that just didn't feel right to me. On the other hand, Champions allowed us to build exactly the characters we wanted and for some reason, the system just clicked with me in a way that no other RPG system ever had.

[proditor]

I dunno about easy to create characters...

Parts of it, sure. It was no more complex than D&D really, but you didn't have to figure decimals in D&D or Hero. I mean, here is a stat line for Hit Points from an old character of mine.

(1.6)(2.0)(1.8)(1.3)*4 = 29.952, rounds to 30 Hit points.

But, you got fast at it. I could make a V&V character in literally, 5 minutes.

Now I can make a HERO character in 30 minutes, which I'm just fine with really, as it is what I was trying to make and not a group of stuff that might not work together (See any of my old threads about "Horro the Magnificent" for a graphic illustration of this phenomenon).

V&V was an awesome amount of fun for the years I ran it and it took my group a while to discover how to break the system. It happened when I let them pick their own powers and someone rolled an 8 for number of powers, and took Animal Powers, Heightened Agility B x4, Heightened Speed, Weakness detection and Heightened Intelligence B. His animal powers were mammal (cat) and he got heightened agility A and Natural weaponry (+3/+6).

Final Agility = 106
Final Intellect = 38
Final Initiative = 139
His to hit was like +30 or something, and his + to damage was even higher. He was a one shot killing machine.

[Hugh Neilson]

Parts of it, sure. It was no more complex than D&D really, but you didn't have to figure decimals in D&D or Hero. I mean, here is a stat line for Hit Points from an old character of mine.

(1.6)(2.0)(1.8)(1.3)*4 = 29.952, rounds to 30 Hit points.

For all its reputation as math-heavy, I've never had to cube anything in Hero.


V&V was an awesome amount of fun for the years I ran it and it took my group a while to discover how to break the system. It happened when I let them pick their own powers and someone rolled an 8 for number of powers, and took Animal Powers, Heightened Agility B x4, Heightened Speed, Weakness detection and Heightened Intelligence B. His animal powers were mammal (cat) and he got heightened agility A and Natural weaponry (+3/+6).

Among the first characters I ever rolled up was a character with Amphibian animal powers, and a good roll. He had a number of Heightened Endurances, and Regeneration. His hit points were in the 6 or 7 figures, and he regenerated over 1,000 per action. I don't recall whether he could hit, or do damage (we started Champions shortly after getting V&V, and there was no way we were playing V&V after that), but try to put him down :eek:

[the grey man]

Random powers could indeed lead to some strasnge character mish-mashes but as a GM it was easy to alow leeway & creativity with character creation. Also I wouldn't let someone create a hero that was 'too' powerful. I jockeyed with the V+V rules totally till I devised a system that worked for me. Champions was invented by Mathes Professors!

[TheQuestionMan]

Since proditor beat me to the punch I though to add another Link.
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/v/vnvgame.htm



Just to let yah know I do not Post everything. ;)

QM

[Egyptoid]

Is Proditor listening? ;)

[proditor]

Huh? What? Sorry, this dog was busy telling me something about Timmy and a well. ;)

[Solomon]

By the time I got hold of a bunch of V&V books, the game was dead and buried and I was into HERO. I tried to run a few games but the issues I usually have in locating players for a supers game were magnified by V&V's campy feel. So we went for campy... the group submitted me a bunch of misfit heroes, including a were-pig and a guy with SailorMoon-like powers and outfit (sorta like Man-Faye). Lots of laughs, but it's not my cuppa, I woudn't invest time in such a campaign.

Still, I like many of those V&V modules, and I lurve Jeff Dee's art.

[Lucius]

Not.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary notes that this is going to be one of those posts where the tagline is longer than the message.

[Vondy]

I hated it.

[Lord Mhoram]

I dislike the game system, but I have liked a lot of the characters, many of them have a goofy silver age feel to them, which is a nice addition to the standard Champs game, where many of the 5th ed characters don't have much lightheartedness to them.

[Jeff T.]

V&V is easily the most 'broken' system I have ever read and attempted to play. However, it was a decent resource for superheroic ideas and artwork.

[Hugh Neilson]

V&V is easily the most 'broken' system I have ever read and attempted to play.

Broken? The first character I rolled up (never actually played it) was the Fabulous Frog Man. He rolled Animal Powers, Amphibian, with several rolls on that chart. He also rolled Heightened Endurance outside his Animal powers, and once or twice within them. And Regeneration.

Due to the massively enhanced CON, his hit points were in the five figures, and he regenerated over 100 hp for every action he devoted to it. Scanning through the V&V villain books, it seemed he had a bit more staying power than most characters.

I think the highest damage I ever say in a V&V product was 9d10, and the next highest was 6d10 - so FrogMan looked like he could stay in combat for a while.

[Thia Halmades]

I only bandied about with it briefly during my flirtation with four-color (before we found common ground with the X-Men and Superman and she moved half her sh*t into my place). What I did create I don't remember the stats of at all. It was a flying lightning based guy with steel wings. I cooked people.

Then the GM had Batman show up swinging a two-by-four and we got into a huge argument over what Batman should and more importantly, should not do. Then I played AD&D for 7 years, then White-Wolf, then 3.5, now Champions.

What do I remember of V&V? Honestly? I liked the character. And I was always borrowing someone's calculator.

[Enforcer84]

Love the game.

[Agent 13]

Never heard of it.

[proditor]

Never heard of it.
Now that's funny. :lol:

[Bik Britelite]

Had two characters made for the game but was never able to play it. Then again, I don't even think I have any of the books anymore.

[Labrat]

FYI I just put my V&V Miniseries #1-4 (Eclipse 1986) up for auction on Ebay if you want to go and bid. Excellent condition, fun art, great price! Story? Meh.

[MPT]

I ran a few games of V&V and remember it mostly for the excellent background information on the law and punishments. I soon, however, moved on to Golden Heroes which had some similarities in the combat system.

[TheQuestionMan]

One of the reasons I picked it up was the section on Law and Superhumans. The Random Adventure Creation Tables where fun too.

Cheers

QM

[CrosshairCollie]

One of the reasons I picked it up was the section on Law and Superhumans. The Random Adventure Creation Tables where fun too.

Cheers

QM

I still use that chart, and some of that Law information, when doing Champions. :)

I played it a few times, and I thought it was okay. It had the same problem as the old Marvel RPG did ... you always (or at least usually) wound up with a very ... strange set of largely incompatible (or at least difficult-to-explain coherently) powers, and the power levels were often extremely disparate (three Thors and two Ant-Men). And the occassional cheating you get with random roll systems*, and Champions was a much better fit for me.

*For the record, I use Point Buy and Average Hit Points when I run D&D. :)

[David Johnston]

People keep mentioning the power disparities without mentioning the other aspect of that issue. In V&V you could actually have a quasi-Superman and Batman in the same team and NOT have Batman be useless. Sure quasi- Superman would do a cartload more of damage but because of the way defenses worked, Batman's 12 points of damage still actually did some real damage. Compare that to designing a Superman and Batman in Hero. There Batman really is pretty much useless if you expect to use him to actually y'know, fight up against foes with the median defenses of a JLA villain unless you do some pretty bizarre things to his design. 20 combat levels, say.

However there was a trick to rolling up coherent V&V characters that most people didn't get. In order to make it work, you could only roll on the powers/gadgets tables until you ran into 1 or at most 2 powers that were incompatible with the rest that you had already rolled. All the rest of your rolls had to be on the Training table because those results fit with anything.
(And usually created a much more effective character anyway because of the way stat increases synergised.) Before rec.games.frp.superheroes died, one of the things I did on there to prove the point that I could roll up consistently coherent characters was something I called "the character of the day". Every day for more than a month I rolled up a new V&V character, never discarding any character and posted it complete with history and personality. I'd rolled up more than forty characters before I created a character that was just totally naff, breaking my run.

[Hugh Neilson]

Golden Heroes had a similar "roll your powers" system, although lacking the separate charts. However, it also had a rule that, for the cost of two rolls, you could enhance a power already rolled, or for the cost of three rolls, you could simply select a power.

It also had a rule that, having rolled your powers, you now had to write the backstory, and any powers that didn't fit in had to go.