According to this press release at Monkey House Games, Jeff Dee and Jack Herman have acquired the rights to their classic superhero RPG, Villains & Vigilantes, which will be released in a new edition ("version 2.1" -- how I hate the use of computer-ese) on June 27, 2010. The new edition will be sold through RPGNow, so I am assuming this means it will be a PDF product rather than a printed book. That disappoints me a little bit, but, on the other hand, any new edition of V&V from its creators is nevertheless a good thing.
I'd love to see more early RPGs re-released to a new generation and V&V is certainly one of the better games to come out within the first decade of the hobby. I plan on grabbing a copy of the new edition and will review it here once I do.
good news!
ReplyDeleteoh, and I love computer-eze! Really, its such an efficient way to differentiate editions.
Great memories of V&V, but it was one of the many Supers games I passed up eventually on my way to the best - Champions.
ReplyDeleteSuperhero 2044: my first, and still dear to me. A setting I would eventually base my long running Superhero setting on.
Supergame!: helped playtest it at Aero Hobbies as a kid. First superhero game with point buy powers (even though we had presumed some power buy into SH 2044 years before), but ruined by the terrible concept of using square roots for task resolution and horrible fashion design student artwork. Brutal.
V&V: so awesome when we made ourselves up as heroes. Random powers fun at first, but in long run unsatisfying. You need to be creative with powers, not roll them up like Gamma World.
Camps/Hero System: The best! Doing a campaign right now, and my D&D regulars love it so far.
Ah Jeff Dee... brings back memories of TWERPS: people who think rolling 3d6 each for six stats is the simplest way to make a character are sorely, sorely mistaken.
ReplyDeleteI think it was also the inspiration for 3rd edition D&D, only using d10 instead of d20.
oh, and I love computer-eze! Really, its such an efficient way to differentiate editions.
ReplyDeleteWe're going to have to disagree on this score. I find this practice on par with l33t speak and loathe them all.
Cool.
ReplyDeleteBut hang on, wasn't Jeff Dee's "unofficial" edition he released into the web (because he couldn't publish it himself) called "the third edition"? We're going backwards!
[And speaking of V&V, did anyone else ever see the copy of V&V put out by Adventure Simulations called Super Squadron. It was an Australian game, so I doubt it got a very great distribution.]
Time to break open the piggy bank. Why is everything coming out in June? [Apart from it being the summer convention season, of course. <grin>]
V&V coming back: Yea!
ReplyDeleteV&V coming back as PDF only: Boo!
I loved V&V. It was the first game I ever GMed. We played it for years.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan, however, of electronic versions of anything. I was going to buy a Nook, but decided against it because I want to own a physical copy of the book. I passed on the PSP Go because it was digital format only, and I want to own a disk. Same with Live; download content holds no appeal for me. So the idea that V&V will come out in PDF format only is a non-starter for me.
I understand it lowers the cost of production, and those savings are passed on to me. But I'd rather pay for an object that exists in meatspace. (And no, I don't consider my having to go and print it out to be optimal or a fix). There's tons of games I'm missing out on because they are PDF only.
I feel sorry for you, Ross.
ReplyDeleteNice! V&V was always our supers game of choice.
ReplyDeleteA buddy tried to start up a Champions game, but it never clicked.
By the way, we never did the whole "play yourself as a super" concept... we just made characters we wanted to play. I don't play RPGs to play myself!
I will agree that the random power generation is not suited to a supers game. You want to play a character that is fun and exciting and of your own design... not some random doob that the dice turned up. At least that is how we felt.
Wait, I thought that Living Legends (which has been available as PDF or POD at Lulu since 2005) was essentially the next iteration of V&V. Does this mean that V&V2.1 will be the next edition of Living Legends? This is confusing.
ReplyDeleteAnybody else still have their orginal rules? I do.
ReplyDeleteI still have my original V&V rules. They're still the best bargain in gaming: A perfectly usable rules set for all of $5!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to read that a new edition of V&V will be coming out. As interesting as Living Legends was, it was too far removed from V&V roots to be considered a true V&V descendant.
ReplyDeleteI think FGU may be releasing a number of games from their control- Starships and Spacemen for example through Goblinoid Games. I have fond memories of FGU and I'm glad we'll have access to new developments in these games.
ReplyDelete