Stronghold

[Steve Long]

Here’s our back-cover text describing Stronghold:

 

HARD TIME

 

Supervillains are a tough bunch. Some can lift dozens of tons effortlessly. Others teleport, walk through walls, cast spells, or control peoples’ minds. How do you keep someone like that in an ordinary prison?

 

You don’t — you keep them in a superprison. Stronghold describes just such a facility, tailor-made to hold your campaign’s villains. It includes:

 

—a thorough discussion of what happens to a villain in the judicial system, from the time he’s captured to the time they shut his prison cell door, including how the law works in a world with superpowers

 

—a complete description of Stronghold itself, with text and detailed maps showcasing its levels, facilities, cells, technology, procedures, and daily life

 

—a look at Stronghold’s personnel, from Warden Wildman on down to the guards and janitors

 

—new villains for your campaign, ones your heroes aren’t familiar with because they’ve been locked up in Stronghold for years

 

—advice for gamemastering Stronghold and using it in your campaign, including several scenario outlines

 

Get ready for Omega-level excitement with Stronghold!

 

 

ISBN: 1-58366-053-9

SKU: DOJHERO222

Price: $29.99 US

[TheQuestionMan]

[Review] Stronghold

 

Greeting Herophiles, here begins TheQuestionMan's latest Hero System Champions Sourcebook Review!

 

Front Cover Art: Continuing the minimalist style of recent publishing. It does not scream Superprisons to me. A long tunnel with cell doors and faces pressed up against the transparent windows would have been a better choice. The Stronghold lettering/Legend left me feel neh!

 

Back Cover Art: Again inkeeping with the current minimalist style of previous sourcebboks. The What's Inside paragraphs are we written and recapture the readers interest. Well Done.

 

Table of Contents: is clearly laid out and easy to reference.

 

 

<<>>

 

 

Cheers

 

 

QM

[Blue]

Re: Stronghold

 

Finally got it!

 

<>

 

I like that the prisoner transport is included and that there's a section on the vulnerabilities, which saves me the trouble of deducing them myself.

 

Now to figure out how to replace my current state of the art super-prison with this very old one. Hmm.... I sense a temporal event coming on.

[Boll Weevil]

Re: Stronghold

 

I for one like the cover. Very cool. I would have liked to have seen some pictures of the security robots though.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Stronghold

 

"Security Robots Pictures would be very cool"

 

Not to mention fun when they run amok.

 

QM

[Greeter]

Re: Stronghold

 

Greetings All,

 

I asked this question in the "Champions" section and just realized this might be a good place to ask as well.

 

What effect, if any, does the power negation system have on technology? It doesn't show any limitation in the "In Game Terms" section on page 56, but I don't see anything about the SPARC armor, handcuffs, or other items having any special resistance to it.

 

My guess is all of these items are not effected. Does that then mean all powers derived from technology are immune to the effects (the Power Negation has -0 limitation to not effect technology), or only the technology used by Stronghold (the Power Negation is bought with Personal Immunity)?

[Steve Long]

Re: Stronghold

 

Actually the Champions board was the perfect place to ask that question, Greeter. This board is more for questions like, "Does the book cover such-and-such topic" or "Does anyone have a review of this book?".

[Silbeg]

Re: Stronghold

 

Yeah... still waiting on a review of this book. Last week I wandered in to my FLGS, but they did not have any copies of the book available.

 

I have been waiting for this book for years, but as always, wanted to check it out first, to make sure my limited gaming $$$ is going to something I can really use.

 

Thanks!

[Greeter]

Re: Stronghold

 

Actually the Champions board was the perfect place to ask that question' date=' Greeter. This board is more for questions like, "Does the book cover such-and-such topic" or "Does anyone have a review of this book?".[/quote']

 

Okay, since I have your attention here, could you please tell us (here or the other thread) just what effect the power negation system is supposed to have on technology?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Stronghold

 

Okay' date=' since I have your attention here, could you please tell us (here or the other thread) just what effect the power negation system is supposed to have on technology?[/quote']

 

It destroys all technology forever. Just erase it from your character's sheet, and deduct the points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wait...that's not how you think it should work? You think it seems like it should do what again? Oh....well there you go then...I guess we have arrived at your answer afterall.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Stronghold

 

I think what Killer Shrike is saying is: "Ultimately, how it works in your campaign - or if it exists at all - is entirely up to you."

[Greeter]

Re: Stronghold

 

I think what Killer Shrike is saying is: "Ultimately' date=' how it works in your campaign - or if it exists at all - is entirely up to you." [/quote']

 

One would think I want to know how Hero Games thinks it should be done considering I bought the book. There was no need to buy the book if I wanted to use the above line of reasoning.

 

Besides, being that the genre is comics, the technology issue can go either way and still make sense.

 

I'd love to know what the author had in mind (as could probably be guessed since I put the money down for the book).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Stronghold

 

The Upside:

 

Stronghold is the Champions Universe Super Prison, made specifically to contain supervillains - and of course wrongly accused superheroes. The book covers everything from when a supervillain is captured all the way to incarceration.

 

Chapter 1 - The Supervillain In The Hands Of The Law. This chapter covers superhero law in the Champions Universe - and even if you don't use the CU setting it's generic enough that it can be adapted to any campaign with minimal changes. The first part covers everything Before The Trial, including the basic on laws governing supers, investigation of crimes and the impacts of 'sanctioned' vs 'unsanctioned' superheroes. Next the chapter covers how to handle a trial, including the basic of any trial, how to create a scenario around a trial (along with a random scenario generator), and other possible issues that might come up. The post-trial section covers super prisoner transport to Stronghold and other precautions of incarcerating a convicted supervillain.

 

Chapter 2 - Welcome To Stronghold. This chapter covers the location, history, the layout of the entire prison and security measures. The history includes how Stronghold came to be, the events of the great Stronghold Breakout and other bits of information that can be used to adapt Stronghold into the history of your campaign. This chapter also includes all the maps of Stronghold. Every section of the prison gets an individual map, along with a nice cutaway of the side of the prison. The last bit in the chapter is a brief description of other superprisons in the world including Canada, China, Russia and Europe. The best part of this chapter is the collection of all the maps, everything from a single cell to entire levels of the prison are mapped out in detail.

 

Chapter 3 - Life Behind Bars. And here we get into the details of Life Inside. Starting with exactly which supercriminals go to Stronghold, how the prison takes them in, how the prisoners are classified and where in the prison they're cell is likely to be. The next section describes the daily schedule that the prisoners undergo. Despite the rigid schedule the inmates have a lot of time to interact with each other. The next section describes the various ways that they do so, and the prison dynamics going on inside between the inmates. And given the nature of criminals the last part of this chapter covers Escaping. Or more accurately, it covers the Stronghold response to possible escape attempts and other issues that might occur such as a riot. Even if you don't use Stronghold this chapter has a lot of good information for setting up and running a prison in general, superhuman or otherwise.

 

Chapter 4 - Personnel. This chapter is split into two main sections - Staff and Inmates. Staff contains write-ups for all the important people who run the prison, and provides a number of persons that interact with the inmates. A lot of flavor is added to the prison with this section, giving a list of less than honest people who fuel the prisons smuggling ring, and those who are on the level and how they interact with the prison. Inmates provides six write-ups of supervillains that you can use either with in-prison scenarios, or as new villains in your campaign after either successful prison break, or as a recently released prisoner.

 

Chapter 5 - Running The Joint. This is a chapter of general GM advise on how to use Stronghold in various ways. The first part is how to adapt Stronghold to your own campaign, most importantly how to adapt it to other genres (Mage-Prison for Fantasy Hero as an example). Next is ways in which you can alter Stronghold to fit your needs. And the last part is a very short section on creating a Superprison from scratch with some pointers on what you will want to look at. And the last part of the book is Scenarios that use Stronghold as the center point. Five full scenario ideas are provided; Escape From Stronghold (an escape scenario), Just Let Us Go And No One Gets Hurt (a hostage situation), Riot In Cell Block Beta-2-D (a prison riot and after math), Heroes Behind Bars (the Heroes in prison!), The SH (a full campaign idea where the PCs are inmates).

 

Peppered through the text are excerpts from the journal of the inmate Requiem, providing some nice details to 'life inside' the prison. These help add atmosphere to how to create the feeling of being in a prison.

 

Even if you don't need a Superprison there's plenty of good advice in this book on how to set up a super-secure prison, or even just an average prison if your needs are that way. The Staff section can be used to fill out any prison in your campaign, and the laws can be adapted to a world where Vigilantes (a Dark Champions campaign for instance) are a common element.

 

The Downside:

 

The maps are awesome, but not all the maps are easily printed out for use. Taking some space at the end of the book to make the maps scale to the average battle map you can buy in a gaming store would have made them perfect.

 

The Otherside:

Stronghold can easily be adapted to any Supers style game, as it mostly provides a framework of how to set up and run a prison, and Super Law system, with very little in the way of Hero System specific facts. Even if you don't need a Super Prison the advise can be used to run any prison in any kind of campaign with a little bit of work.

 

Overall, if you feel the need for a detailed prison or set of laws in your campaign I definitely recommend this book. From the legal system that incarcerates a villain to life inside the prison itself this book covers pretty much anything you could need to run or use a prison in your campaign.

[BigJackBrass]

Stronghold availability?

 

The book is in the HERO store, but I can't find it being stocked by anyone else. Has Stronghold actually been generally released? I've clearly missed an announcement or two somewhere.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Stronghold

 

It's been out for a good long while now. I've seen it in my local FLGS and online at several other places.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Stronghold

 

Hm, that's what I thought; and yet not a single on-line shop I can find in the UK has a listing for it, despite carrying the rest of the line. I'll have to make some enquiries and see if there is a glitch in distribution over here.

[death tribble]

Re: Stronghold

 

Monster Island and Stronghold both turned up this last week in Britain.

 

I now have a print copy of the former.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Stronghold

 

Yes, I spotted it at Leisure Games recently, although I still have no idea why it took so long when all of the other Hero books seem to arrive quickly. Thanks for pointing it out, DT.