Crooks!

[Messageboard Golem]

More than 50 of the world's most dastardly supervillains, monsters, power-mad sorcerers, and would-be conquerors come alive in this lavishly illustrated catalog of criminals conceived, written, and art-directed by Super Unicorn design studio! Battle the maniacal Atomic Brain, conquer the demon within Johnny Reb, and maybe score a date with the Other Woman, mysterious maven of the Clique! Crooks! includes four complete villain headquarters, new powers, a host of villainous devices, and an introduction to the META-4 Universe, first seen in the Mutants & Masterminds core rulebook. You'll definitely want to catch these Crooks!

 

[Teflon Billy]

I love this product.

First off the bad stuff (and there is not much)...

There are a couple of typos and/or grammatical errors here and there--including the funny-as-hell "it's a passing of the guard" comment in the opening comic strip (I think its either a changingof the guard, or a passing of the torch), and an improper use of "Repelling" in place of "Rappelling".

But this is nitpicking. The errors were small enough and innocuous enough to leave my enjoyment of the book untouched.

Space-wasters in the meat of the book include the "All Wigger" graffiti artists Tag Team (no black or Hispanic kid in there at all?...maybe I misunderstand the RL scene) and the "Shallow Teenage Girl" group, The Clique.

I suspect others may have use for them both, but they kind of fell on deaf ears here (Deaf Ears? Blind Eyes maybe? Ok...revoke my Metaphor License), but even this criticism is simply a statement of my personal preferences. Tag Team and The Clique are produced with the same care and attention that has clearly been lavished on the rest of the book.

Now, onto the good.

The art is--as usual--beautiful, Genre-appropriate and dynamic. I don't think there is a "dud" in the entire book art-wise (Ms. Martian's feet look funny, but, well, she's a alien...who am I to guess at alien physiology?)

If you think that M&M has previously done a good job with their art then you will not be disappointed. The work of Ramon Perezstands out to my eye as the most appealing, but again; we are talking subjective preferences vs. objective fact. Even the introductory comic is good (it makes The Pugilist, who I have been lukewarm on up until now, seem really cool).

Moving on, the first chapter is (for me) of incredible utility. A whole chapter on Mooks; the "hired help" that supervillains hire by the score. Thugs, Combat Droids, Vampire Minions, Spies, Ninjas, Sky Pirates, Cultists...and many, many more. This chapter is going to see a lot of use in my game.

The meat of the book, the CROOKS themselves are a really well-realized bunch. My main complaint about the old Champions material was that, by and large, the endless stream of villain books all seemed to be filled with characters that I could have thought of myself, but was too lazy to stat out.

This book is packed with really imaginative stuff (Though the absence of a more complete writeup on Gepetto, my favorite Iconic Baddie from the core book was kind of saddening).

Standouts in this chapter (IMO) are...

• Moodswing: For having the most innovative use of the M&M ruleset yet seen.
  
• Murder Man and Butcher Boy: For finally giving a good example of the sidekick feat in use.
  
• Beholder and Spasm: For showing us that disturbing content will make it into general Green Ronin releases.
  
• Czar, The Nihilist, and Iron Cross: For showing us that GR and SU understand that Soviets, Zombies, and Nazis have a guaranteed place in the genre, but can all be re-imagined and come out fresh

Anyway, moving on; the new rules for Villain Player Characters look cool. The feats are interesting and well-balanced, including total genre gems like Diplomatic Immunity and Human Shield as well as some nice examples of weaknesses appropriate to villains (Quirk: Braggart and Dull Witted for example)

Despite this being a "Villain" supplement, the rules for the Legal System (something that has been a long time coming in super-games IMO) will see use in my campaign even with PC's as heroes.

Finally...I love the glimpse we are given of Super Unicorn's META-4 Setting. I loved Freedom City; indeed, felt it was the best RPG product of any type last year, but if the META-4 setting is produced to the same quality standards that we've seen from M&M thus far, I suspect it will be a lot of folks (at least those who grew up in the same era of comics I did) default setting. It's history cleverly takes into account not only real-world politcal history, but th history of the comic book industry as well.

That pretty much tells the whole story. If you play M&M you owe it to yourself to grab this book.

...And by "Grab" I mean purchase


This is where my review ends; but the following information--reviews of each character in the supplement--was written up by Vuron over at www.nutkinland.com

His writeups mirror my views almost exactly, and he has graciously allowed me to add them to my review...

Teflon already did a nice job at a general review of Crooks. I echo most of that review although I was not as impressed with the general world history of the Meta-4 universe as I was with the Freedom City universe. It seems Steven Kenson has a better grasp of what makes comics special than the authors of Crooks. Of course that requires an extensive knowledge of comics that general precludes anything resembling a social life

Anyway instead of a general review I'm going to give my impressions of the villians in the book.

Atomic Brain- I like the look and the art but for some reason I can't buy into this guy's story. Yes I can accept his creation and the nature of his powers but I can't quite accept that a PL20 villian obsessed with annihilating the earth in a nuclear inferno who has Super-Intelligence 20 would've not succeeded at least in some small part. The Uber villians of comicdom (Thanos, Darkseid, etc) who have that sort of intelligence are more cosmic in scope and obsessed with plans on a universal scale. To have someone arguably in the range of the aforementioned villians obsessed with a relatively small task like annihilating a planet pushes my suspension of disbelief too much. Score: B+

Beholder- Too cool although this is hardly a unique character concept (shocking advant-garde performance art mixed with serial killer) but some aspects of the character are kinda unique, like the use of the shroud of turin as a face mask. Sacred and profane in one package. The art is pretty good but I would've gone with something darker and scarier. Score: A-

The Bestiary- Standard supervillian team with a twist, all four villians kinda fit the spiderman animal villian mold with a postmodern edge to them. The art on all of them is pretty cool and I could actually see myself using these in a game. Score:B

Black Diamond- Snowboarder meets Iron-Man, I argue that no comic character that uses a popular pastime for transportation and/or powers is cool (Silver Surfer is a possible exception although he's cooler without the surfboard IMHO) and this is no exception. Oh well at least it's not rocket racer Score

Blitz- Woot hot nazi metal band princess, really nice art and an interesting twist on the standard neo-nazi theme. The fact that she can be an effective villian just through her message rather than her overt actions makes a nice twist. I would use this combo of Andrea Strucker - Emma Frost in a second. Did I mention she's a hot nazi babe? Score: A

Carrion Queen- Queen of the Undead is a pretty standard concept in games and this one covers little ground although she does present a pretty potent and somewhat alluring package. Score: B

Choke Chain- Punk Rock girl with destructive rage and powers, uhh this one is neither unique nor particularly well done and the art is substandard. Score: D

The Clique- If you like Adam Warren art you'll probably like this art and the idea of a group of late teen early twenties supervillianesses does seem to have an irrestible tug on the consciousness but I think the execution of this falls flat. The other woman is an interesting concept for a character and I might just use her outside of the group. The other characters are eminently forgetable unless you really dig episodes of VIP. Score: C

Czar- Favorite Villian in the book by a wide margin, not only does he have a cool visual appearance but he also has cool backstory and motivation. An essential inhuman figure who reviles humanity and keeps a russian splinter state under his thumb harkens back to the inherent coolness of Doctor Doom and Latveria. Score: A+

Dr Dungeon- Although he has some cool powers namely the ability to send heroes to a prison dimension (hrmm maybe like the kryptonians trapped in the mirror ) his visual appearance in the book isn't great and his motivations are kinda cheesy. Overall he's not that great or interesting. Score: D+

Iron Cross- I like the character visually and motivation wise because former nazi superheroes are the bomb but I dislike the current trend to blame the horrors of the nazi's on alien influences. I think implying skrull or skoviak influence for the policies of the reich does a disservice to the message that man can trully be inhuman to his fellow man. Score:B+

Johnny Reb- Initially I was very skeptical of a confederate villian but combining the concept of a racist villian possessed by a brother of mine has some inherent coolness. While I wonder about his utility and the assumption that one of my brothers wouldn't change his persona in 150+ years he could be useful in a campaign. Score: B-

Kalak- The mayan death priest is pretty cool and while I might've chosen an Aztec God for his patron he does have a cool motivation and his ability to constantly come back from the dead does make him a dynamic villian. I do wonder if he's a bit too powerful as a PL20 sorcerous villian as he's likely to kill of parties quite easily. Score: A-

Miss Martian- 50s era alien superbabe who fits the Sci-fi movies of that era. Between her protection, mind control and super-charisma she can be a long term source of irritation to the party especially if she control a lot of innocent bystanders to bash on the party. The art is kitschy but fits the character concept. Score: B

Moodswing- Asian psyche with 6 additional psyches floating around. Combine the triggers for the various personas and the custom power set for each and he can be a very interesting character to GM. The fact that the core personality is not truly villianous makes dealing with him an interesting challenge, The art is nothing great but this interesting take on multiple personality disorder is a real winner. Score: A

Moonquake- I personally disliked the art and the idea of a spoiled brat ruining the reputation of his heroic precursor is hardly inspired. However as a foil for bricks and a possible contributor to a super villian team he's worthwhile. Score: C+

Mountain King- Pretty much a badass troll who can definitely work well in campaigns with asgardians and magic. Combine his impressive personal power with fierce minions and he could easily wear down all but the mighiest heroes before dispatching them with his massive hammer. I didn't really care for the art myself (Walt Simonsen has the monopoly on this style art IMHO) Score: B

Murder Man & Butcher Boy- What if you made Bruce Wayne more like Lex Luthor/Wilson Fisk? Combine him with a fearsome Robin-like assistant who carries deadly cleavers and has a mad-on for melee? Alot of fun. This is truly the kingpin of crime in the Meta-4 universe and overall he makes alot of sense especially as he most often works through intermediaries. If you use the optional trial rules in the back he becomes quite intimidating as he can generally get off scot free from all but the most heinous crimes. The art in the core book is much better than in Crooks but overall it's still not too bad. Score: A-

Neutronik- Sort of a Bizarro Protonik character but with a pretty cool background. Apparently he's the capitalist analog to an alternate earth where the US is the communist state and Russia was a core bulwark of capitalism. He lead a team of clones in order to bring the world under some semblance of order but the clones began warring among themselves for primacy. He then proceeded to kill off his clones before the world ended up nuking itself in an attempt to defeat Neutronik before he could become the master of all. He's sort of anti-hero version of superman who doesn't pull punches and is desperate and deadly to prevent superheroes from acchieving primacy in the meta-4 earth. The art is nothing spectacular but the thought of Superman clone using his heat vision to slice off opponents legs and arms sound very cool Score: A-

The Nihilist- An undead vengeance spirit who works as an assasin. Pretty interesting villian who works as an largely unstoppable death machine. Between his reincarnation and his single minded pursuit of his targets he would be an excellent addition to a vigilante campaign. The art is more edgy than cool per say but he can be useful in a dark setting. Score: A-

Player 2- Supervillian/FPS geek using VR illusions to fight superheroes. He's nothing spectacular and is pretty much an update of say an Arcade style villian. Combine this with less than spectacular art and you've got a disappointment. Maybe useful for a 4 color style campaign. Score: C-

Redhawk- Armored Supergoon who likes to use his banged up armor to steal technology and bully others. More of a comic distraction than a true threat he can be a decent pest for an armored superhero or tech-guy. I was disappointed with the art. Score: C+

Rose Monk- Street Fighter wannabe who wants to become the ultimate melee fighter. Despite having a somewhat lame concept he's kinda got some interesting motivations and is truly a badass in melee. I could easily see him being a template for generic martial arts cult etc. The art is decent but not spectacular. Score: B

Sister Blister: Teenager with the inability to interact with humanity due to her fiery energy field. I'd say she's cooler than Cyragnome seems to think as she's kinda got the forced into the villian role working for her much like a early Rogue from the X-men. I think trying to rehibilitate her and teach her more control over her powers would be a good focus for an small campaign. Unlike Cyra I also dug the art. Score: A-

Sovereign- I kinda see this character fulfilling the typical alien menace character like Mongul from the DC universe. Combine his might in combat with his minions and his imperial designs on earth and you've got a recipe for Supers trying to battle Hi-Tech aliens trying to invade earth. Behind him is the overarching threat of his much older, wiser and likely deadlier estranged father and you have a multifaceted villain. Score: A-


Thanks Vuron

 

[GameWyrd]

No. I’m not here to gush about Crooks! Nevertheless, I am here to tell you that it’s a wonderful book.

Green Ronin’s Mutants and Masterminds has been the best game to date to say "So long and thanks for all the fish" to the d20 logo. The colourful, slick and professional superheroes d20 based RPG is simply excellent. This tradition of superiority continues for Crooks!

It’s a thin book for a hardback but the page count of 128 is not to be sniffed at. Those are 128 pages of glossy colour and atmospheric artwork. The result is a book you like to hold. It’s almost like an illustrators portfolio; you can just pick it up, flick through the pages and soak up the inspiration.

There’s a strong tradition of NPC books in the super hero RPG genre. Fantasy games have manuals of many monsters and the hero game equivalent is to dedicate plenty of page space to intricately back storied villains. Every key villain in the book has a double page spread to his or her (or its) self. There are four columns of text and a double column with of illustration in most cases. It works very well.

You’re not getting any experience points for deducing that Crooks! is a supplement filled with super villains. You’ll not even get any experience points from this reviewer-GM for guessing that there are plenty of non-super powered and low powered crooks to round out the book either. The Mutants & Masterminds goblins are excellent, a catch all term from the multi-dimensional creatures that escaped through the Trollgate that Kalak the Mystic opened it in 1942. Kalak the Mystic appears later on in the book. There are aliens, demons, super spies, ninja, robots, security agents, military forces and more here in the mini-crook section. They’re not just tossed in randomly; they’re bound into the possible plot thread that runs through Crooks!

This plot line that binds the villains and enemies loosely together is a good idea. It’s not such an ineffectual plot line that GMs might as well abandon it and start from scratch rather than attempt to flesh it out and transform it something interesting. This thread of story isn’t so dominant that a GM couldn’t just ignore it entirely. It’s the best of both words. If you want a handy continuity (so often the Holy Grail of a decent comic book series) to keep your villains appropriately intertwined then this lightweight plot is ideal for you. It’s also perfect excuse to lavish the reader with a 10 page comic introduction to the book. Or, if you want, you can pick and mix the villains.

Our villains cover a wide range of power levels. The Atomic Brain and Kalak the Mystic are each PL 20, the Czar and the Iron Crossed (nicely balanced in ideology) are the next most powerful at PL 17. The weakest of the named crooks are Pixie and Wallflower at PL 7 (they’re part of a gang, though). That’s a good range of Power Levels. Add in the not so powerful villain and some animals (sharks, gorillas, etc) and the range runs the full gambit from 1 to 21. Yes, 21. I was being deliberately misleading when I listed enemies like demons after noting that the book includes stats for low powered villains. Demons? Low powered. I think not. This is good news for Mutants & Mastermind groups who are playing with a Justice League power level. At the back of the book there’s a handy power level index of villains. That’s just the sort of thing I want from a book like this.

There are more than just villains of different shapes and sizes in Crooks! There are new rules, these include, new feats (the game doesn’t quite escape the d20 trend of adding new feats whenever possible), new devices, plenty of new powers and weaknesses. The super hero genre allows and even encourages new villains (or allies) to enter the plot flow with previously unknown (or impossible) powers and abilities.

I think the book’s quick villain templates and GM tips and advice on campaign style and control are best seen bonus material. I like the book too much to cynically dismiss these sections as filler. I think these short chapters are too good to be dismissed as filler.

There’s a catch, I fear. Crooks! is very good but it is just a book of villains. If you’ve no intention at all of using any pre-written villains then you’re just left to simple enjoy the professional gloss of Crooks, the comic, the new rules, powers and feats... Despite all of those, if you’re still certain that you’ll never use a villain from a supplement then Crooks is a luxury. I think it’s a luxury worth having though. Oh. Yeah. And if you actually interested in some ready to go villains then you can’t possibly go wrong with this supplement. It seems that sometimes crime does actually pay.

* This Crooks! review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[billd91]

Crooks is the latest publication for Mutants and Masterminds, a d20 super-hero game that has really been sparking a lot of interest in the genre, and I'll start out by saying that it's very good, if a bit pricey.
The hardcover book ran 27.95 at my FLGS and is fairly thin at 128 pages. I think I probably would have been satisified with this available as a somewhat cheaper soft-cover, since I've very rarely had significantly more durability trouble with my RPG soft-covers than I have with my hardcovers as far as wear and tear. I was tempted to rate this a good rather than superb because of that... however, the content, I think, considerably overweighs my concerns about the relative price.

Crooks provides background information on the META-4 campaign setting, the setting from which the template characters in the core MnM rules are drawn. This is a West Coast oriented setting with some interesting differences from the Freedom City campaign, which is an East Coast oriented setting. That said, there's little that can't be adapted and used in the other setting. A little care in integrating their respective campaign histories and you're good to go.

There are also some rule additions in this supplement, mostly additional weaknesses, feats, and even a couple interesting templates that can be applied to characters. Many of the feats and weaknesses are geared toward the villainous end of the spectrum in case the players want to have a super-villain campaign or the DM wants to add some oomph to his villains. I like one of the super-feats in particular: Into Thin Air. This is pure comic book. When the villain is defeated, particularly in one of his stranger local bases like the one over the volcano or in the orbital shuttle, and he is thrown into the nuclear furnace that will kill him, his body and stuff all disappears, potentially leaving the death somewhat ambiguous. This is perfect for so many master-mind villains and even main villains in less powerful campaigns. How many movies did that pestky Ernst Blofeld appear in, only to have his nefarious plots thwarted by James Bond ending in what appears to be his own slightly ambiguous death?

The bulk of this volume, however, is made up of NPCs for the characters to deal with. Some are minions, easily defeated, but with some interestingly varied power ranks. Others are full-blown villians including the somewhat comical group of grrl villains, the Clique, Nazi villains Blitz and Iron Cross, and deranged sickos like Beholder. All are lavishly illustrated, have detailed histories, tactical notes, one or two plot hooks, and notes for using them in a campaign. The villains are pretty interesting and inventive and come at a variety of power levels, with some preponderance at just a few points over and around PL10. The writing is clear and engaging and humor is put to good use as it has been in other MnM publications.

One thing of interest: this particular publications, unlike most other superhero RPGs or even comic books, does not shy away from mentioning real-world events or personalities. Beholder, for example, apparently had something in for both Marilyn Manson and Drew Barrymore, judging from his description. And I have to wonder just what spot Duran Duran has in the minds of the authors. On second thought, maybe I don't want to know. I do find it interesting, though.

 

[Psion]

Crooks!

Crooks! is a villain resource book for Green Ronin's popular d20-spinoff supers game, Mutants & Masterminds. Design is credited to Erik Mona, Kyle Hunter, and Sean Glen.

A First Look

Crooks! is a 128 page hardbound book priced at $27.95. This seems a little slender compared to the 250 page books for $25 just two years ago, but the book is full color. Considering black-and-white softcovers of the same page count are pushing the $25 dollar mark, by more modern standards its not so bad.

The cover is illustrated by Cully Hamner in a deliberately comic-like style. It depicts the Atomic Brain (a villain first introduced in the Mutants & Masterminds rulebook) wailing on a variety of heroes also introduced in the rulebook.

The interior is lavishly illustrated in full color, including a 9-page introductory comic featuring a number of the villains featured herein. Most of the remains pictures lack a background, simply illustrating the featured character with a stylized name logo. The interior artists cited are Axel Ortiz, Andrew Hou, Arnold Tsang, Brian Stelfreeze, Corey "Rey" Lewis, Cully Hamner, Ed Tadem, Eric Canete, Heather Martin, Jake Parker, Jason Martin, Karl Waller, Kyle Hunter, Leonard Kirk, Ramón Pérez, Sean Chen, and Steve Scott.

A Deeper Look

The first image you are greeted with when you start flipping through the Crooks book is the Meta-4 logo. You might recognize this logo from a few pics in the Mutants & Masterminds rulebook. Indeed, Meta 4 seems to be the name given to the prevailing home universe of most figures that appeared in the rulebook. Meta 4 is mentioned in the background mentioned on the Green Ronin webisite as an organization that researches super-powered beings.

Meta 4, notably, is not the setting of the Freedom City universe. That said, a sidebar later in the book claims that by switching a few references, one can use the material in this book mostly intact. For the most part that is true, but you will probably come away either not using all of the history described or making a lot of adjustments and explanations to explain the differences between the history of the two.

The first major section of the book is a seven-page comic, "Tears for Everyman", which describes a villainous plot of the Atomic Brain against several of the key heroes introduced in the M&M rulebook, and begins to shed a little light on some of the backstory that they lacked in the rulebook.

The second chapter provides 7 pages of dense type (with a few pictures) describing the history behind the Meta-4 setting. As you might summize, you can't exactly describe the history only talking about the villains, so you will find a lot of interesting dirt on many major figures, including some you might have been playing as samples characters in the M&M book. Did you know, if you are playing Protonik, that your character was originally created in Russia and brainwashed by the KGB?

The history of Meta-4, a bit like that of Freedom City, emulates that of the supers comics through the years, and pretty much assumes that most major historical events (like WWII, Vietnam, etc.) still occur, but extra fictional history is piggybacked on it, with elements like superhuman experimentation and alien visitations. A few things don't quite occur like you see in the comics of our world. For example, few comics touched on social issues in their early years, but in the Meta-4 history, some of these issues come up in years much earlier than the comics dared touch upon them.

The third chapter details "Mooks", or relatively weak lackeys that usually face heroes in large numbers. Each page contains on or two mook "concepts" (like aliens, combots, military personel, and sky pirates) and each entry has two or more stat blocks. The different stat blocks represent either different ranks or different varieties/specialties. Depending on the "mook" in question, some won't seem like mooks. The base "demon" is PL 10.

The fourth chapter is the largest in the book, and details the crooks themselves. Each entry takes one or more pages, and has a similar layout: A full-color picture (generally excellent; there were only a few that didn't appeal to me, e.g. wasphawk), a background, use notes, tactics, a stat block (sorry, no nicely laid out characters sheet style stat blocks like in the rulebook) and "capers" (plot ideas using the crook in question.) Each also has a graphical "summary block" which clearly calls out the PL, basic concept (like "amphibious water manipulator" and "mythic subterranean conqueror"), location, identity, group affiliation, and vital statistics.

The concepts themselves are generally good, though often having the corny sensibilities of the comics from which they are drawn. Herein you find exaggerated theme villains, plays on words, power mad conquerors, and petty villains. As you might know from reading the introductory comic, there are some repeat appearances of villains that appeared in the rulebook like the Atomic Brain (Kalak also receives a new treatment here, and Damocles is also mentioned).

Some other reviews have dwelled upon the concepts themselves; I think I will just point out this: though I find some of the concepts corny if nostalgic, one they all seem to have is utility. The capers give you immediate plot ideas, and the usage notes remind me of my favorite Green Ronin product, Legions of Hell in that every entry gives you ideas. For example, its not well enough that you know that the Nazi villain Iron Cross will plague spaceflight experiments, but the engaging backstory behind it could be the basis for an investigative campaign that could engage your supers group for some time. Not only that, if you don't like the backstory, they give you variants.

The fifth chapter provides a brief miscellany of new rules. In addition to new character options (feats, powers, and devices), the chapter also introduces the d20 concept of templates to the M&M game (mostly to handle effects like vampirism), rules for crisis level (which allow the character's exploits to affect the state of the world), and a system for resolving the criminal justice system in a supers-ridden world.

Finally, the book has a complete index and a convenient breakdown of the villains by power level.

Conclusions

I have to admit that I found many of the entries a bit corny, and didn't see as many nostalgic notes here as in the rich Freedom City setting. However, one thing I did see was a lot of undeniable utility. This is more than just a "monster manual" for M&M; it's also a sourcebook providing the basis for many campaigns. That's the first book of this sort I could say that about since Legions of Hell.

Overall Grade: A-

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[JoeGKushner]

I finally got a chance to start playing in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign. We’re using the default setting of Freedom City and the GM has been using all the books to add little bits of this and that (Meta-4 and Freedom City) to his game in addition to lots of Champions books and GURPS IST for background ideas and maps.

Now that I’ve actually played some Mutants & Masterminds, I wanted to see how Green Ronin handled making the NPCs. For this, I break out my book Crooks. The book starts off with the standard stuff. Two pages detailing that helped design and write the book followed by a table of contents. Then it gets interesting with a mini-comic that is worthy of being on the newsstands before breaking off into the history of the Meta-4 Universe. For the most part it’s a similar history to the real world with a few nips and tucks here and there to showcase where the super powers have made a difference in the world. On thing I thought interesting is the banning of super heroes in wars. This quickly and neatly takes heroes out of major conflicts without making the history completely unrealistic.

The next part of the book is one every GM will find useful as it details mooks. These are the foes that go down in droves. At first I wondered what type of variety could they have? After all, a mook is different than a standard enemy. They don’t suffer the different levels of health loss (hit, stun and disabled results), but rather, are either knocked out or killed. Great for those players who are trying to emulate the body counts of the Punisher or Wolverine.

That didn’t stop the authors from coming up with a wide list of creatures including the following; aliens, antag agents, combots, cultists, demons, goblins, mechanauts, military personnel, ninjas, security agents, sky pirates, stellar guard, superspies, terrorists, thugs unitrol mediators, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. There are a wide variety of power levels represented here and many of the entries include multiple versions of the mook for greater variety. Take for example cultists. We have initiates, adepts, trusted siblings, highest among equals, and most holy. They range in power level from 1 to 6. These varieties allow the GM to mix up what he throws at the players.

Now I don’t agree with all of these things being mooks. The mechanauts for example are a power level 10. It seems almost silly that a starting hero could knock one of these things out with one blow. I’d probably put some campaign note there about making the first couple the players encounter regular enemies until the GM feels that the players have gotten the hang of fighting them and then using them as mooks. After all, how many times have we seen the hero fight a new foe only to have great difficult with it until it’s revealed that that foe is only the first of a new strain of enemy? This is true even with robots of this power as in many X-Men comics, the heroes have problem with a new brand of Sentinel only to get the hang of fighting the first one just in time to fight a swarm of them.

After detailing mooks, the book goes straight into the bad guys. Each character starts with name, power level, quote, character concept, non-mechanical information (name, identity, base, group affiliation, nationality, height, weight, eyes, age, hair), background, using, and capers.

It all starts with an old favorite, the Atomic Brain. Here’s an epic foe for most campaigns, a Power Level 20 villain who has enough power to in essence kill a hero with one shot with a PL 18 radiation Energy Control ability. The nice thing about these listings though, isn’t just the game statistics. Those are only a small part of the character after all. The nice thing are the full color illustrations, the Caper or campaign ideas that are included. The little extras like tactics and ideas on how best to use the character. The fully fleshed out background and details. The little extras like special henchmen, in this case, Singularity. To further flesh things out, they’ve included a sample of one of his bases, Volcano Island. All in full color.

There are a wide variety of opponents to chose from. These range from gold old fashioned Nazi who survived their time like Iron Cross, to modern Nazi wannabes like Blitz. For those who want to shred the Golden Age of comics and move into a more modern era, Murder Man & Butcher Boy, an aging criminal overlord and his heir apparent. The book mixes in a good deal of classic style elements ranging from deadly overlords from other planes, like the Carrion Queen and the Mountain King, to martial art masters like Rose Monk. It’s a good mix of power levels as well, perfect for new players or experienced characters.

One of the nice things about the characters presented is that they can make for whole campaigns in and of themselves. Take for example Sovereign, an exiled alien prince with dreams of stellar conquest. His allies, Sulemain and Waymaker, assist him take over ‘backwater’ style planets like Earth. This allows the GM to slowly introduce the Broan empire and all of its minions and enemies, potentially giving the players more allies and potential allies than the GM knows what to do with. A lot of work, but something that could make a campaign well worth playing.

Besides crooks, there are also new rules. Some of these take a campaign in a new direction like ideas on how players can portray villains for a change of pace with some new feats, powers, devices and weaknesses to simulate that aspect of the comics. Some of these rules are perfect for villains who seem destined to never face justice via trial like Above the Law where they gain a +4 bonus to their trial modifiers while others like Body Language, where you send a message using the Innuendo skill to another who doesn’t have it, are good for any character, good or evil.

For those who need more examples of weaknesses, we’ve got several including addiction, disabled, quirk, and susceptible. Of this, only addiction is a single weakness. The others have different types so you can have quirk braggart or quirk fanatical or disabled dull witted or disabled frail. These weaknesses allow the GM to introduce more variety into his characters in addition to acting as guidelines for creating his own weaknesses.

In another vein, templates are added. These templates have a PL adjustment and information on how to leave the template and how to customize it for different campaigns and styles. For example, a vampire, despite new powers, has many weaknesses. This allows the GM to customize his villains through vampirism or other ‘catchy’ supernatural diseases including zombies and werewolves.

There are numerous little tools to help the GM run a better game. These including a Crisis Level for your campaign that allows the players to use Victory Points to improve various levels of society. These range from personal, social and global conditions. The GM is advised that depending on the origin of the Victory Points, that they only be allowed to effect that level. For instance, defeating a group of local thugs wouldn’t net the heroes any Global Victory Points.

Some may want to run through a trial for a super villain and there is a campaign option, The Legal System, that allows you to do just that. It includes details for crime severity, circumstances, and of course, the actual results.

In terms of using the book, it includes an excellent two-page index with almost every subject checked. Want a specific villain? Check. Want a mook? Check. The only part where it falters is in game mechanic specifics like if you wanted to look up all Feats. Nothing under Feats or Superfeats for that matter. The listing of villains by power level shows a wide range of opposition from PL 1 to PL 21. Ironically, the PL 21 is a mook.

The book is designed by Super Unicorn and once again, they’ve set some high standards for an Enemy style book. The art is top notch. The readability is high. The variety in art styles is not jarring. In short, it’s a great looking book that’s easy to read, reference and use.

Those looking for more opponents for their Mutants & Masterminds campaign should quickly pick up Crooks!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Crooks is a book of pre-made Mutants and Masterminds supervillains, for Green Ronin’s superhero RPG Mutants and Masterminds. The book is 128 pages long, hardback, illustrated in full color, printed on glossy paper. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book of supervillains that cost this much to produce. It’s expensive at $27.95, especially for a book that’s less than 150 pages long, but you can see why. This is a handsome book and it looks good sitting next to your copies of Freedom City and Mutants and Masterminds. It uses the same format as all of Green Ronin’s other superhero books. It’s a kind of fake comic book template. Quite attractive and well designed.

Cully Hammer did the cover and a lot of the interior artwork. He’s really good, but then again so are most of the other artists who worked on this project. There were a lot of them. The title page lists Axel Ortiz, Andrew Hou, Arnold Tsang, Brian Stelfreeze, Corey "Rey" Lewis, Cully Hamner, Ed Tadem, Eric Canete, Heather Martin, Jake Parker, Jason Martin, Karl Waller, Kyle Hunter, Leonard Kirk, Ramón Pérez, Sean Chen, and Steve Scott. I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never heard of any of them before, except from other Green Ronin projects. They all do good work.

Clearly no expense was spared on putting this book together, but for some reason there is a lot of white space at the end of some of the individual entries. And while each villain comes with an extremely useful stat-block summary that simplifies using them in combat, the layout of the stat blocks themselves is pedestrian and dull. These are about the only bad things I can find to say about this book. It’s hard not to be impressed with the overall product. Like all of Super Unicorn’s work, this is a class act.

The book begins with a seven-page comic entitled: Tears for Everyman. It uses some of the villains from this book and some of the generic heroes from the basic rule book, weaving them into a clever little plot that demonstrates the overall tone of the book; part silver age, part goofy 1980s Chris Claremont X-Men. The comic itself is so good that it could stand alone as a product. The level of illustration and writing are right up there with the stuff commercial superhero comics are putting out.

The first chapter of text (for some reason it’s in really tiny 9-point type) gives you the history of the Meta-4 universe. Here I disagree a little bit with the Super Unicorn team’s design philosophy. The great thing about classic supervillain supplements like Enemies or Villainy Unbound was that they didn’t come with any specific campaign world. Instead they had villains you could plug into your own campaign. Much better and more versatile, IMHO. Now everybody wants to sell you a campaign world so that they can keep throwing core books at you. Even Steve Long over at Hero Games seems to have caught the virus. However, with that said, it’s hard not to like the Meta-4 universe. It covers most of the ground that major comics companies have laid into their backstories, starting with the dawn of time and moving forward through the world war two epoch, the silver age, the seventies, eighties, nineties and today. It shows a lot of sensitivity to the history of comics, and how our conception of superheroes has evolved. It’s also full of clever little references and in-jokes, although there aren’t as many of these as there are in Freedom City.

While the timeline largely revolves around superbeings and their affairs, it also outlines the history of the 20th century and how it has been affected by superheroes. It puts a lot of emphasis on the US, but of course that’s where most superhero comics are set. Many of the names of major politicians are different, especially in the present day, but you can tell who they stand in for. The Iraq war has happened, so did Vietnam, but the author doesn’t take any specific position on either of those wars (although deeper in the book there is a supervillain entry that gives us a clearer picture of the author’s position on current events).

The Meta-4 universe fleshes out and gives back stories to the generic heroes from the basic rulebook, and explains most of the other illustrations as well. It’s cute, fun, flexible and reasonably generic. It is not however compatible with the (better) campaign universe in Freedom City, despite the author’s claims to the contrary. To merge the two, you would have to make big changes to one or the other.

This is followed with a chapter of “Mooks”, low-powered opponents who can be used as henchmen. Everything from security guards and soldiers to two different types of evil robots and lots of supernatural monsters (vampires and werewolves, to name a few). Mooks range in level from PL1 street thugs up to demons, who start out at PL10. Some people have complained that a PL 10 demon isn’t really a mook. I wonder why they would care. The real question is, do you find it useful? All of the mooks are good. Some, like the Stellar Guard, the Combots and the Air Pirates (who have just about the only illustration in the book that I don’t like) are specific to the campaign world), but they can be easily adapted to for use as some other kind of NPC. Interestingly enough, when you add in all the mooks, the book contains at least one NPC of every level from 1st through 20th.

Next come the villains themselves. The villains are organized in simple alphabetical order. Supervillain teams are integrated with the solo villains by name. There is no separate section for groups.

Some of the villains in this book are characters from the core rulebook, fleshed out in much greater detail (the Atomic Brain, for example, and Kalak). All of them get lots of space, few have less than a thousand words, not counting stat blocks. Each one has a great big full-color illustration. Every one has at least one adventure seed included and some have as many as three. Sometimes there are little extras thrown in as well. For example the Atomic Brain comes with a map of one of his headquarters (inside a volcano on a deserted island, naturally), and the Rose Monk comes with an extra stat block for a brotherhood of sinister martial artists who may be hunting him.

The stat blocks themselves are laid out with no particular style and they’re in fairly small print. Apart from this, the content is truly excellent. It’s not just that the authors have given us a wide selection of powers and power levels to choose from, they have also given us a villain for every conceivable kind of adventure. Want a desperate race to save mankind from atomic holocaust? Then the Atomic Brain is your guy. Want to foil an intricate plot to steal a big pink diamond? Then use the young ladies of the Clique. Want a scary, horrific adventure with a touch of mystery? Then use the Nihilist. Want an even more upsetting supernatural adventure like the kind you’ve read in Hellblazer? Then I’m afraid you simply must use the Beholder.

Some of the best character concepts in this book include: The Beholder, who is by far the scariest, creepiest, most loathsome villain I’ve ever read about in any superhero RPG. An artist of crime and cruelty, he walks around in a bondage suit with the Shroud of Turin stapled to his face! He’s relatively low-powered, suitable in both tone and PL for gothic Batman-style adventures, but you can scale him up by adding some of his demonic fans (his work is popular in Hell and has quite a following down there).

The Bestiary, an American superhero team who turned against their country after unveiling some awful secret about the Iraq war. Whether you’re in favor of the war or against it, you have to admire the author’s bravery for even including a team with this premise. What kind of hate mail must Super Unicorn be getting?

Doctor Dungeon, a goofy silver age villain whose motives are described as “escape, steal things, rampage, get in the papers, get locked up, repeat.” He has a powerful, but non-lethal (he’s silver age, after all) attack, a costume that looks like Jack Kirby designed it and a tendency to rant about how brilliant he is. What’s he doing in the 21st century? He’s been in jail since the sixties and he just finished his sentence last month.

Moonquake, the embittered son of a famous superhero, determined to destroy his father’s legacy and do the world as much harm as possible before he gets gunned down. A rampaging villain with gravity powers, superbly well-designed by the author to wreak a lot of havoc in urban settings.

Murder Man and Butcher Boy. A shocking, funny, vicious parody of Batman and Robin, complete with a Murder-mobile and a Murder-cave. No one suspects that this polite billionaire and his youthful ward are the most feared names in the underworld—because they rule it!

The Toreador, one of the world’s greatest assassins, a hero-killer with inimitable style and grace, now getting just a little too old and dissipated to do his job the way he used to. How can a character this evil be sympathetic?

Those are just examples. All of these characters are good, many are great. There’s not a clunker in the bunch.

The book’s final chapter contains new rules, including a “crisis level” mechanic that allows the PCs to have an effect on the overall quality of life in their world, and a legal system for resolving trials. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone attempt to create mechanics like these since Superhero 2044. They’re a welcome addition to the game. I would have been happy to buy them in a stand-alone product.

The book concludes with a list of villains organized by Power Level and an index. Both are useful and too few books of this type include either one.

In summation, while I know this book is expensive it’s probably not going to come out in softcover, so treat yourself and buy it anyway. You will be glad you did.