Character Art

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

Actually' date=' as I just mentioned on the BlackWyrm forums today, we'll probably be phasing out the hardcovers, for a while, at least. Our printshop's quality on hardcover binding has been spotty at best, and we'd rather sell a consistently good softcover than a random-quality hardcover.[/quote']

Are you using a different printer then you did on TAS? I haven't had any problems with that cover since I purchased it.

 

Will there be a price change for the soft cover M&M books? I'm probably going to order a copy of the M&M even though I pre-ordered the Hero version. I haven't decided if I want the full-color version or not yet for my M&M copy.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

Sell or not' date=' I'm committed to put out three Hero books this year. The first, The Fires Of War, is available now. The Algernon Files is underway. And Critical Security Update (more modern supervillains) will be out later.[/quote']

And I'm committed to buying all 3 books, probably in both systems.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Character Art

 

That's the plan' date=' unless some fan beats me to it based on the art previews we've put up.[/quote']

Sounds great Dave ... looking foward to them & the other products

[Bill_CCHKK]

Re: Character Art

 

That's the plan' date=' unless some fan beats me to it based on the art previews we've put up.[/quote']

I've got one, but it's about 10 Megs compressed. I'll be happy to send it to you, Dave, or to anyone if you give me the 'OK'.

 

- Bill

[mattingly]

Re: Character Art

 

I've got one' date=' but it's about 10 Megs compressed.[/quote']Feel free to post a link to it, Bill. It's nice work.

 

We'll still be coming out with our own, however, so that the relative sizes will be accurate.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

I just wanted to say that my pre-order copy of Fires of War arrived today, and it looks sweeeeeeeet!

 

228 pages of golden age characters at my disposal. I'm not sure I agree with the power level choices [i'm not a huge fan of 4 speed characters with 29 dexes] but those things are, for the most part, fairly simple to fix.

 

Were the low defenses and speeds a conscious choice due to it being a golden age product [and thus trying to fit in with the DOJ idea that golden was weaker then silver, and silver weaker than bronze], or is that the power levels that will be used throughout the entire 3 book series?

 

Anyway the book looks very nice. I was surprised to see the Jormungandr in color. I do not know if that was a fluke or intentional but I liked it. Makes me wish I had purchased the full-color version now.

[mattingly]

Re: Character Art

 

Yes, the lower SPDs and DEFs are a genre convention we decided on. Our rationale is on page 4.

 

Glad you liked the suprise splash of color. Our printer had a deal running where we could get four color pages put into the book for the cost of black-n-white, so we figured we'd slip them in as a surprise.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

Yes, the lower SPDs and DEFs are a genre convention we decided on. Our rationale is on page 4.

 

Glad you liked the suprise splash of color. Our printer had a deal running where we could get four color pages put into the book for the cost of black-n-white, so we figured we'd slip them in as a surprise.

Yeah, I read the dex/speed section after I had posted above. That's what I get for hopping around rather then starting at the beginning. I'm really like the book. The grey-scale art looks much nice in the book then the line art looked in the pdf preview too. This book is really fun to read. I'm not a huge golden age fan but I've seen plenty I will be stealing for my new Miami Nights game.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

I just wanted to add that I love the fact that you have used hexes rather then squares for the various maps. I'm also really liking the Jormungandr. Any chance you might sell the deck plans in a pdf at full-size so we can print it out and piece it together to make a table-top version? I'm really liking that ship.

[Longshadow]

Re: Character Art

 

We've discussed selling maps by themselves at play sizes, but it's a lower priority than other things and get's back burnered. We can always open the discussion again.

 

Oh, btw, anyone here play in Dave's M&M game at Gencon? He had full size maps, 1 square = 1 inch, 8 foot long, covered multiple tables, laminated maps of each level of Jormundgandr for the game. Much with the cool.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

We've discussed selling maps by themselves at play sizes' date=' but it's a lower priority than other things and get's back burnered. We can always open the discussion again.[/quote']

Well if you were to sell the maps I'd buy a set of both as I'll be playing in an M&M game soon and the squares will come in as handy as the hexes for Hero.

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

Mitchell, once you've had a chance to completely read through the text, how about posting a review of the book? Also, I second his vote for full size maps, I even started a thread asking for the same thing over on the Blackwyrm message boards.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

Mitchell' date=' once you've had a chance to completely read through the text, how about posting a review of the book? Also, I second his vote for full size maps, I even started a thread asking for the same thing over on the Blackwyrm message boards.[/quote']

I don't know what kind of review I can give. I have found this book to be very entertaining. It wouldn't be unbiased.

 

I have really enjoyed seeing the write ups for all the various bases and vehicles. Jormungandr is great, the Flying Pyramid is a blast [but watch out for those death traps! ]. The Atlantian cruiser is another ship to be feared.

 

Some of the things I like best are the Timeline and Pages From History section. The little creamy bits are what make me happy.

 

There's so many characters that it's hard to get a handle on who I like the most, but right now I'm leaning toward Old Glory. I like the idea of entity characters who are a composit of ideals: in this case america. It's very much like Dr. Metropolis from Freedom City. I can also see using this character in the modern era.

 

I like the layout of the book so that each character has thier picture and bio on the left and write up on the right. That way you can see the whole character at one glance. Some pages do have a lot of white space but overall I have no complaints with it. I can only hope DOJ publishes something as good when they do GAC.

 

After I've had a chance to read through it all, and some characters two or three times, I have a better feel but right now I'm very please.

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

I don't know what kind of review I can give. I have found this book to be very entertaining. It wouldn't be unbiased.

 

Just crank out what you liked and didn't like about the book.

 

I have really enjoyed seeing the write ups for all the various bases and vehicles. Jormungandr is great' date=' the Flying Pyramid is a blast [but watch out for those death traps! ]. The Atlantian cruiser is another ship to be feared.

 

How many vehicle write ups are included?

[Enforcer84]

Re: Character Art

 

Didn't play, but I saw it. That was a big ship.

[Longshadow]

Re: Character Art

 

How many vehicle write ups are included?

 

 

Let's see:

Sentinels' Rocketplane

The American Eagles' Patriot XJ-25s

Der Falken's Eisen Vogel

Jormungandr

Die Kriegsmachinen

Atlantean cruisers

Atlantean fightercraft

Dr. Scarab's Sky Pyramid

 

and

 

Salamanca's Sky Galleon

 

 

 

So....that would be nine vehicle write-ups, art, and, where appropriate, maps.

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

Unfortunately, I have to wait a few days before I can even find out if my copy arrived. I need to get back to a US port, and then try and track down all of my mail.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

I received my M&M copy in the mail today. It looks nice too, but the Hero version is thicker and meater and feels better in my hands. I'll need time to digest them both now, and see how you "free-handed" some of the conversion. The M&M version does look nice [the layout is better in the M&M version than the Hero version due to size] too. Kudos to everyone involved!

[Vanguard00]

Re: Character Art

 

What's the difference between "The Algernon Files" and the "Algernon Files (2nd Edition)"? Is it the same book with revisions or two different books? There doesn't appear to be a Hero System version of the 1st one so I'm not sure it matters, but I thought I'd ask.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

What's the difference between "The Algernon Files" and the "Algernon Files (2nd Edition)"? Is it the same book with revisions or two different books? There doesn't appear to be a Hero System version of the 1st one so I'm not sure it matters' date=' but I thought I'd ask.[/quote']

The Second Edition characters use the M&M 2.0 rules. There will also be a couple of extra characters that were in pdfs [the Crone that I know of for sure] in the 2E that replaces some of the optional rules.

 

The Hero version of TAF 2.0 will be out in a couple of months.

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

Mitchell, now that you've had a few days to review the material, care to share any more of our views on the book?

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

I have been hyping The Fires of War: The Algernon Files, Volume 2 on the message boards for about a month now. My reasons for this was because I enjoyed The Algernon Files which BlackWyrm Games had written for M&M and I wanted to see their first Hero System book do well; but as I read through the book I found several other reasons to hype the book, not the least of which is because it’s very good! I’m not a fan of golden age/WW 2 gaming material but I found enough within TFoW to change my mind.

 

I’m going to be as honest as I can in this mini-review. I want the company to do well and keep producing Hero System books but I’m also a stickler for professionalism so some of my comments might seem a little biting. I hope my praise is taken to heart and my criticisms are taken objectively by the “powers that be” so that future books might not have the same problems.

 

The Fires of War is a 228 page licensed HERO System book which is broken into 3 chapters: Introduction, Allies, and Enemies. Each of those chapters will be detailed below.

 

Introduction:

This chapter is 7 pages long and consists of a brief discussion of what the Golden Age was and what the players should expect from the time period. The section includes a three-page timeline of the Algernon Universe [AU] that you can fit into the normal WW 2 timeline. One unusual aspect is that the timeline extends from 1935 to 1954 so you get a full feel for what was going on with the AU characters during that era. My one complaint here is that I’m not overly-fond of timelines. I would have found it much more interesting if each year’s information had just been written into a historical paragraph or two for that year. That way you feel as though you are reading a story rather then just absorbing data. The introduction ends with a short chart listing WW 2 era weapons and vehicles. I really didn’t feel as though I needed any more information about those two subjects [but I’m not someone who is into weapons and vehicles] so those two charts were fine with me.

 

Allies:

The heroes chapter of the book is 84 pages long and consists of two major hero groups [The Sentinels and the Defenders of the Crown], four lesser groups [The Timesavers, The Fearless Five, Avery Hawkins & his American Eagles, and the Orphans], and about a dozen independent heroes and npcs.

 

The chapter starts out with the Sentinels. There is a nice one-page write-up of the general origin of the group and then it delves directly into the characters. The power-ranges of the seven characters ran from 400 [Jack B. Quick] to 700 [Cagliostro] points, with 500 seeming to be the most common. The characters are presented in a two-page format with the picture and description on the left page and the character sheet on the right page. I love this format. I find it very intuitive to be able to see the entire character when you open the book rather then needing to flip back and forth between pages.

 

Most of the character concepts you would expect to find are there: Patriot, Mystic, Strong-jawed Brick, Speedster, etc. I didn’t find any of the characters dull or poorly built. Each character seemed to be built on an even number of points. This was ok but I’d rather have seen the characters require however many points as necessary rather then trying to make everyone fit into a certain mold. I should probably point out here that these characters are built using the Heroic Standard rather than the CU Superheroic Standard. This means that most of the characters have stats in the normal range: below 20, 4 speed, etc. I do not consider that to be hampering in any way, even though I prefer the Superheroic Standard.

 

The section also includes a basic write-up for the team’s Rocketplane and Brownstone. Again, I didn’t find the basic write-up to be hampering at all. There’s also a hex map of the brownstone, which I thought was a great touch.

 

The Defenders of the Crown, as the name implies, are from the British Isle. Again you get a one-page origin of the group and then it goes into the characters. Four of the five heroes were what I expected to see from a British group but the Ultranaut caught me completely off guard; perhaps because I’m not that familiar with the golden age genre. The point-range of these characters was from 350 [John Bull] to 1000 [ultranaut]. The characters were interesting and well written. There seems to be several interesting personality quirks within the team and I am quite sure they would be fun to role-play during a game session.

 

The Timesavers didn’t get the one-page biography so it was not as simple for me to understand their purpose. I didn’t even initially understand that Doc Epoch was a member/leader of the team, but it did sink in. The group is a strange mixture of six characters ranging from 150 points [Archimedes Jones] to 400 points [Folding Dragon]. One of the most interesting aspects of the group is that they live on the Null Point: a satellite which exists outside of the time stream. The satellite is fully written-up and there is a very nice picture and simple map. I found the characters interesting and would easily use them in a modern Champions game [with a few powering-up tweaks].

 

The Fearless Five are a reluctant group of heroes who work together at times to achieve certain goals. Their power-levels range from 400 points [Tommy Triumph and El Toro] to 500 points [Malachite the Magician, the Patchwork Man, and Queen of Hearts]. This team seemed the most points-contrived of all the hero groups. I did like the individual characters though, and I always have a soft-spot for Frankenstein’s monster characters, so the Patchwork Man is my favorite.

 

Avery Hawkins and the American Eagles scream Blackhawks and it is nice to see such a homage in a book. The members of the group are all “normals” but their costs range from 450 points [Avery] to 250 points [everyone else]. There’s a nice picture and simple write-up of the group’s Patriot XJ-25 jets. I enjoyed reading about this group of people. I was always a Blackhawk fan so this section set well with me.

 

The Orphans are not heroes but rather a group of npc war-orphaned children used by the “neutral” hero Amadeus as spies and informants. This reminds me of the Newsboy Legion and again was a nice touch that harkened back to the era.

 

The independent heroes cover a wide range of types and power levels. As I said in another post I was particularly found of Old Glory, Gunslinger, and Sea Devil. Part of the reason might be that these were super-powered characters whereas many of the other independents were normals with gimmicks [utility belts, gravity packs, etc.]. I’ve always been more interested in Superman going off to war rather then Batman, but that’s just me. The point-ranges ran from 350 points [Jackson Wilde] up to 3,100 points [Old Glory]. The chapter ends with a breakdown and write-up for the Pickman Museum of Antiquities [owned by the Wilde Family and run by Laurel Wild].

 

Overall I enjoyed all of the heroes presented in the book. If I were to make one gripe about the Allies chapter it is that I think the author should have included a page or two telling the GM how to use the various hero groups presented in relation to whatever group the PCs would be having. Some suggestions for the GM on what types of other groups might be most useful for the PCs would have given some additional needed, IMO, options. Of course TFoW does not pretend to be more then it is: A Strike Force-like book full of campaign characters, but I found myself drawn to the world and would have liked more information on how to play in it.

 

Enemies:

This is the longest section of the book and consists of about 130 pages. One of the things I missed on TFoW were the chapter splash pages that were in The Algernon Files. When you turn the page from looking at the map of the Pickman Museum you are immediately a full page of information entitled “Einsatgruppen Ubersoldaten.” While I certainly understood that those words were German, I wasn’t immediately sure by looking if it was some Allies German section or if it was enemies. The file tab format at the bottom of the page stated I was now in the “villains” section but that was not immediately apparent. Still that’s a small complaint and I can understand with the cost of artwork why the splash page would have been left out, but I did miss it.

 

As I stated above the first villain group is Einsatgruppen Ubersoldaten [EU]. This Nazi group consists of what seems to be 18 villains. It is a little difficult to tell at first glance because there are minion of villains within the group that sort of distract the eye and you’re not entirely sure if they are supervillains themselves of agents [examples include: cultists, Die Schocktruppen, Valkryie, SS Guards, and Acolytes of Thule]. Barring that minor difficulty I would say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about each of the villains within the section.

 

The power-ranges of the group run from 300 [Der Falken & Wunderkind] to 1,250 [Der Feuerenzahn]. There’s a little bit of everything included here from vampires and golems to dragons and monsters, and of course you can throw in all the “normal” villain types of mad scientists and perfect humans. EU is an eclectic group of individuals who all have their own story to tell.

 

My personal favorites of the group were: Dr. Veronika Von Frankenstein, Jotun, Schreckmacher, Die Spinne, and the leader Dr. Ernest Thule. I also enjoyed the fact that Der Falken was the “Red Baron” type with his own super-jet [Der Eisen Vogel – which is beautifully illustrated and simply presented] to go up against The American Eagles. The section also includes a very nicely illustrated Castle Frankenstein with a simple but complete write-up.

 

The crowning pieces of the chapter is the write-ups for the Jormungandr submarine/aircraft carrier and the Kriegsmaschinen war machines. The Jormungandr is rendered in full-color and contains all four levels [and tower] with hex map scale so this can be blown up and used by a GM as a map if needed. The Jormungandr is impressive in size and scope and is a masterful addition to the chapter; it’s a pleasant twist you do not expect. The Kriegsmaschinen are available for download as a pdf sample so I will not go into them here. I will say that they look much nicer in full-color then they did in the sampe.

 

The Emperor’s Hand is the final villain team of the book. As the name implies this team is the Emperor of Japan’s superhumans. Like the other sections this one starts out with a one-page biography, but it also includes a page of information on the Kage Do: Japan’s ninja-like organization which secretly tried to control everything from behind the scenes. I found the Kage Do to be quite interesting and liked it’s linking back to Atlantis and Kun-Lun. I’m certain I will get plenty of use out of the organization in my game.

 

Surprisingly the villain group only consists of four members [most of the others will killed off in the biography section]. The point-ranges are from 450 points [Tetsujin] to 1000 points [Hachiman]. I was a little surprised to not see an npc write-up for Yoshisato, the man who was lucky enough to bring them all together. Of the four villains I was most intrigued by Kamikazi but the god Hachiman is quite a combat monster.

 

Overall this section was the weakest for me. I expected to see more villain write-ups. The Emperor’s Hand seems quite small compared to EU. I would have like to have seen more of the write-ups for the characters who were mentioned in the biography. The group just really gave me a sense of incompleteness. Time to start writing my own I guess.

 

The independent villain section is huge and takes up 69 pages within the book. The section contains 27 villains with point-ranges of 300 points [Malice A. Forethought] and 1,150 [Abraxas & Scarab]. This section also contains a very nice four-page section on Atlantis history and equipment, two pages on the Haven and Wakefield Islands, three pages on the Saurian lizard race, and a page on the Tarot Crime Cartel.

 

My favorite villains from this section were Abraxas [scientist in a robot body], Dagon [King of Atlantis], Dr. Prometheus [inventor], Dr. Scarab and his flying pyramid [last of an ancient race], The Emperor of Heaven [Chinese master criminal], The Hag [immortal life-stealer], and Salamanca [Pirate with a living voodoo doll and his ship the Sky Galleon]. That’s not to say that the other characters were uninteresting, but these are the ones which captured my fancy.

 

The section also has a small breakdown of a group of criminals dubbed The Terrible Triumvirate. These three gave me a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe. Unfortunately their details and write-ups were done in min-format so there was not a lot of information I could glean about them. I did find them interesting and might flesh them out myself eventually for a Pulp Hero game at some points.

 

Of course there were characters I didn’t like. Element of Crime, Evergreen, and Iron Skull all seemed too contrived to me. I’m sure someone else will be fascinated by them. They just didn’t do it for me.

 

At the end of the book is what I consider to be one of the best parts of the whole publication: Pages From History. This section covers each character in the book and gives a sentence or two telling you what happens to those characters throughout history. You read things like: Character A was killed by Character T in 1951 in Singapore. Or, Character M died in 1985 of cancer. To me that section really made the characters feel real. I would have liked to have seen this section expanded upon with each character getting a full paragraph rather then a sentence or two. We could have learned about families and other things which could have then been used to create legacy characters for the PCs to play at a later date. But again, this is just a game book, not really a campaign world book.

 

Overall I would say I enjoyed about 90% of this book. I think Dave, Aaron, Ben, and Rob did an excellent bit of writing here. I only wish I could write as well [which you can see I can’t based on the writing in this review ]. My only real complaint about the book was in the layout. As I said above I loved the two-page spread for each character but I think a lot more could have been done to fill up white-space on the page more. Most of the character’s descriptions only take one-half to two-thirds of a page. This left a lot of white-space at the bottom of most pages. There were also several pages that only had a quarter-page of information on them. I got the impression that the descriptive side of the character sheet was laid out based up on the M&M layout, and because Hero character sheets take so much more space it couldn’t all fit on one page. My suggestion would have been to increase the font size on the page from 8 to 9 [or 9 to 10 as I don’t’ know what size font was used] on most of the pages so as to fill up the space.

 

I know there was also a very conscious effort to try and scale the picture of the characters to the correct size on the page. I don’t really thing that was necessary. In most instances the characters are only a few inches apart in height so the scaling showed no real difference. It might have been more advantageous to increase the size of the picture to use up more of the white-space on the page. I don’t mean to imply that the pages look sloppy, because they don’t, but sometimes they just don’t look complete because they are so empty.

 

The layout is a minor nit-pick but to me it’s a professional product that should live up to a 100% professional standard. I’d give the book a 75% based on its current layout. I know this book was pressed for time do to Gen Con but I sincerely hope the next book has a little more time for layout.

 

If you made it this far then you are braver then I am. I’m sure you encountered several hundred spelling and grammar mistakes. Too bad for you. I’m not a writer and I don’t claim to be. I didn’t even go back and proofread this, so if there are glaring mistakes chock it up to my dyslexia.

 

Overall I give The Fires of War 4 stars. The characters are interesting and fun to read, and I’m sure fun to use as well. I hope BlackWyrm Games’ next two books are as fun to read [i know The Algernon Files is] but they have a slightly better layout on the Hero System side. The layout of the M&M version of the book looked much nicer to me.

 

Happy now Dominique?

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

Good job. If you happen to swing over to the Blackwyrm site, you can see the mini-review I wrote for the M&M version of the book. Your's is much more detailed than mine, and as far as your writing goes, it's fine so don't be so hard on yourself.

[MitchellS]

Re: Character Art

 

Just in case anyone is interested this is how I would rate all of the Champions books which have been published to date [in alphabetical order] for comparison:

 

5 Stars:

DEMON

 

4.5 Stars:

Shades of Black

UNITL Superpowers Database

Villainy Amok

 

4 Stars:

Conquerors, Killers & Crooks

Hidden Lands

Hudson City [non-Champions]

Teen Champions

The Fires of War [third-party publisher]

 

3.5 Stars:

Champions Universe

The Mystic World

Vibora Bay

VIPER

 

3 Stars:

Gadgets & Gear

Galactic Champions

Champions

Champions: Battlegrounds

Dragon's Gate [third-party publisher]

Millennium City

Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

The Kandris Seal [third-party publisher]

UNTIL

 

2.5 Stars:

Arcane Adversaries

[Dominique]

Re: Character Art

 

Mitchell, I took the liberty of posting a link back to your FOW review over on the Blackwyrm Games site. It's in the same thread as my review of the M&M version. One quick question for you, who are your favorite characters from the two books?