Shades Of Black

[Steve Long]

Here’s our back-cover text describing SoB:

 

FOR LOVE OF EVIL...

 

Centuries ago the Black Paladin’s paramour, an evil witch, placed him in an enchanted slumber so that he might awake in the twentieth century to bedevil mankind once more. Now he seeks to return her to life to aid him in his schemes! With the help of the sorceress Talisman and some powerful new followers, he prepares for a ritual that will bring new evil into the world... unless your heroes can stop him!

 

Shades Of Black is an adventure for Champions that pits your heroes against the Black Paladin and his minions. In Act One, Murders Passing Strange, the heroes investigate a series of unusual murders that seem to have an occult connection... which leads to a confrontation with the Black Paladin as he attempts to kill another victim in a foul ritual!

 

Information obtained during the investigation leads to Act Two, A Course Of War. As the heroes follow up on other clues and learn the true extent of the Black Paladin’s plan, he attempts to distract them with a daring attack on a museum.

 

That leads to Act Three, An Unholy Rebirth, in which Black Paladin tries to complete his scheme to resurrect his paramour by means of an evil ritual performed at the haunted Delacroix Mansion. It’s up to your heroes to bring his twisted scheme to a halt!

 

The book concludes with character sheets for the new villains, copies of the maps that appear elsewhere in the book for easy reference, a combat summary sheet, and other play aids. So get ready... it’s time for your heroes to plumb the depths of evil in Shades Of Black!

 

ISBN: 978-1-58366-116-1

SKU: DOJHERO232

Price: $26.99 US

[Edsel]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Does this differ from the PDF of the same name? Which by the way is an excellent adventure.

[Steve Long]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

No, it's basically the same. I touched up the editing a bit, and we put in the map that we left out of the PDF, and I added a section about adapting the adventure to other places like Vibora Bay and Hudson City. But the vast majority of the content is the same.

[mallet]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Is this a sign that we might start getting more adventures being published?

 

Although I assume it probably depends on how well this one sells?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

I think this might have the annual Reprint Material Book that allows them to keep a book in the schedule but provides some breathing room to Steve to research/write more. (like the Equipment Guide, Combat Handbook, You Gotta Have Character, Evil Unleashed have been in the past.)

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

This is a very fine adventure, rich in mood and characterization, with a fine balance of investigative and combat scenarios. It's also a well thought out and useful example of how to plot for the various actions players might take that change the direction of the adventure or "skip" some sections of it. I also have to applaud the high quality and useful detail of the several included maps.

 

Just be advised that two of the principle villains of the adventure, the Black Paladin and Talisman, are not fully statted in this book, but appear in other Fifth Edition books; and the adventure also references various demons written up in the Hero System Bestiary.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

I've had a review ready to go for a while now, but when I heard they were printing it I held off and am waiting on the hardcopy to add a paragraph on that and note any differences (however minor) that could entice those who've had it for years to rebuy it in book form.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

I've been waiting for this, thanks for making a hardcopy of the adventure.

[Myrlyn]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Steve:

 

Will the PDF be updated at all to further match the Book (missign map for example, layout changes if any, etc.)? If it is, will previous owners of the PDF be able to download the changes?

 

Keith

[Steve Long]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Yes, and yes.

[Myrlyn]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Sweet! So the natural follow up to that question is... "will there be an announcement for when the PDF is updated?"

[mvoncannon]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Hey, I am just as excited as you are. Relax, though. Steve is getting ready to go under the knife. There is one thing I have noticed, and I am sure you have too, and that is if they say it is going to happen, it will.

 

Please make it soon. Please, please, please.

[Steve Long]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

The problem is, right now Andy and I are both sick, and we have other serious deadlines to keep on top of. We'll get to it as soon as we can, I promise.

[aylwin13]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Thanks Steve. That's all we can ask for from you guys. Hope you two get well soon.

 

 

 

 

And then get back to writing...

[HeroTina]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Shades of Black is in the store now. Steve and Andy will do the pdf and cp as soon as possible

[Myrlyn]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

Thansk for the replies Hero team. I know you'll get to it ASAP.

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

I must say you guys have done a great job with your last couple of products for v5 revised HS. My son Matt and I have enjoyed them all and will keep buying them all right up to the end (when v6 comes out). I want to see in print a v6 HS core rulebook first before I make any judgements on that system. I can not change or stop 'progress' so I will just have to sit and wait and see what it is truely like before I make my final decision on weather to continue to collect HS or not. So with that said I own all of v5 and v5R HS and will buy up all the remaining products to add to my collection till then.

 

Penn

[ghost-angel]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

The Upside:

 

Shades Of Black was originally released as a PDF Only product in 2003 for the HERO System, now five years later we get treated to a hardcopy print of this Champions (Superhero) Adventure. This scenario sees long time Champions villain The Black Paladin as the central figure in a devious plot involving black magic and his own tragic past. Split into three parts, the Adventure could easily run through three gaming sessions depending on how your group takes to investigations.

 

Act One - Murders Passing Strange. The adventure, or the timeline for the adventure, begins before the PCs get involved. There is a short back story that sets the stage to make the murders and crimes preceding the PCs involvement more than just your average mudrers taking place. The PCs are approached by a Detective with the local police (The adventure is set in the Champions Universe, and Millennium City, as a default - but names are easy to change) asking for help in a serial murder case that might involve supervillains. Five pages of police reports can be copied and handed out to PCs to read - each report has it's own page to make this easy. This first part is a straight forward look at the scenes of the murders and pure Cop-Show style investigation. There are a number of Action/Results provided that will yield information for the PCs, many of them overlap enough that a group need not do all of them to move forward with the scenario. Act One ends with a classic Urgent Call as the detective finds a fifth victim - this is done loosely enough that the PCs should be able to find some of the outlined critical information before this occurs. The victim has been kidnapped, making the second half of Act One a race to save them! If things have gone right the PCs know just right where to race to to saver their life, and thus onto the first meeting with the scenario's main villain and his cronies.

 

Depending on how fast the investigation goes, or how much the PCs want to get into, this Act could take a full gaming session. The fight at the end is more of a teaser than a fully fledged Master Villain fight and should go quickly, leading into Act Two without pause.

 

Act Two - A Course Of War. The Black Paladin himself should have escaped, with luck a few of his cronies were captured for the PCs to interrogate to learn of the plan behind the Black Paladin's actions. This act introduces the twist - the Black Paladin's plans involve one of the PCs, or if none are suitable to the adventure, a DNPC. The first part of this Act involves following up with any captured villains from the first fight. Each of the three main underlings of the Black Paladin is presented, again each has enough information that only one is really needed to move forward, but as always with these things the more the better. Following up on leads here should get some, or all, of the Black Paladin's history and shed some light on the nature of the villains plans and desires - and oddly enough humanize him just a little. The second half of this Act is a prison breakout while the PCs follow up on various leads, and if that's not enough the villain group DEMON gets involved in the scenario. Depending on how the PCs handle this part there could either be a fight, or chance to set up a recurring villain, both or neither. Either way there is also some information on how to expand the events going on in this part of the adventure should you need to do so - either to get more information to the PCs, or just because beating up DEMON is fun.

 

Again, this Act could stand alone as it's own gaming session, depending on how the PCs like to handle investigations in the game, or how involved you want to make DEMON to the overall plot or either the scenario or your campaign. Any fights here should be mook-fights and very short.

 

Act Three - An Unholy Rebirth. This part of the story is all action, starting with a call for help if playing out right this Act should barely allow the PCs to catch their breath, much less try and figure out what's going on. Anything they don't know at this point will likely wait until after-the-fact revelations. The Black Paladin attacks the kidnapped victim that saved at the end of Act One. However the battle goes, the Black Paladin should have a chance to capture his actual intended target, and flee. Once the Black Paladin has his target it's a chase back to the fight scene from Act One, and the final confrontation.

 

Normally, I try to leave out details as much as possible while reviewing an adventure, but there is one aspect I feel should get some attention, which could be a spoiler. The Mansion in the adventure, even if you don't use it as intended, makes an excellent template for a Haunted House scenario, you could easily take it out of the Superhero Setting and use it as the focus of a Pulp, Horror, Fantasy or Modern Paranormal game by itself, or even with some of the elements in this scenario. This aspect alone is worth the cover price on the book and is easily one of my favorite parts.

 

This last act should be the end of the scenario, the Black Paladin should be vanquished and his plans dashed. Perhaps a few recurring villains from other parts of the adventure have been created. On top of that the adventure as written leaves a few strings dangling that can be used to make this simply part of a larger scenario, or a thread in an entire campaign focused on Mystic elements.

 

The Appendix contains write-ups for most of the Villains, with the exception of the Black Paladin who is found in the Conquerors, Killers, And Crooks source book, and some other minor enemies from the Hero Bestiary. All in all three new supervillains are written-up and several more minor villains and enemies. The book also adds a short Index that the original PDF didn't have.

 

There are a few differences between the original PDF and this book. First the PDF had a breakout box with a Pre-Adventure Timeline that, while not essential, would be helpful to integrate the adventure as a whole into your campaign overall, especially if your the type of GM to give background news updates on the game world. The map that was missing from the original PDF is back, but since the whole book is in black and white any maps that had color in them in the PDF don't anymore.

 

The last change is the cover - the PDF had a rather cool cover that was replaced with a big black front picturing just the Black Paladin. While the books cover is definitely cool I think the original was better. But the book contains a few more pieces of artwork overall than the PDF did.

 

The Downside:

 

The adventure really only makes one mistake, it's an adventure focused around one Master Villain - but he isn't written up in the book anywhere. You need another book to get his full Character Sheet. If you don't own that book you need to create your own write-up. If an adventure is going to focus on a specific villain including him in the book somewhere is essential, otherwise it limits the ability of those wanting to convert it to another system too much, and even hampers those who do play HERO.

 

The Otherside:

 

Arch-Villain missing aside, this adventure is well written, especially for groups that like to get into investigations, as enough material is presented to really get in depth into that aspect though it's not needed to proceed. It's a bit linear in style, and almost start In Media Res with several murders already having taken place to get the PCs involved on the case.

 

Even if you don't play HERO, but want a solid Horror or Mystic Superhero scenario to run, this adventure is a solid one and a good addition to any GMs library. As I mentioned before, just the part on the mansion can be used to get miles of adventure out of the book.

[Guest Admiral C]

Re: Shades Of Black

 

I just picked it up and though I can agree not having the main villains write up in there is an is a possible obstacle, you could insert a similar villain of your own design without too much work.

 

I dunno if I'll ever run it though. I haven't been able to get up a good supers group in a long time. Good none the less and hopefully I'll see more PDF to book collections, maybe three in one book similar to collections like Classic Enemies.