The Ultimate Villains & Vigilantes Resource...

Continuing the countdown until the release of Villains & Vigilantes version 2.1 this weekend, I'm reprinting this article below from 18 months ago about Tim Hartin's incredible V&V site (as promoted at the top of my blog for as long as I can recall).

Since I found it back at the end of 2008, The V&V Emporium has been a great site to dip in and out of for a bit of 'nostalgia' (as I say in the piece below), but should I now get a new campaign going with this new edition of the game this will become my 'go-to' Bible for houserule ideas, non-player characters, Cthulhian creatures, zombies, aliens etc

Reposted from December 14, 2008:

Sucker as I am for a dose of nostalgia, I've been hankering for a bit of Villains & Vigilantes action since I came across The Villains And Vigilantes Emporium by chance the other month.

I was searching on Google for certain Lovecraftian images to supply Neil (my figure painter) as a guide for some figures I was thinking of sending him, when I noticed one of the images came from a site with "V and V" in its web address.

I thought I'd better investigate as, has been stated many times on HeroPress, Villains & Vigilantes is one of my favourite roleplaying systems from my youth and was the game that led to the creation of not only my Acrobatic Flea persona but HeroPress as a whole.

The Villains And Vigilantes Emporium, maintained by Tim Hartin, is a wealth of house rules, homages to the great Jeff Dee (the game's artist supreme), useful links and character conversions.

It is this latter section that blew my mind. There's not just one or two comic book characters painstakingly statted out for V&V, but a cornucopia. And not just obvious sources - such as Marvel and DC characters - but also such genre favourites as monster movies, Battle of The Planets (aka Gatchaman), the worlds of HP Lovecraft, Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy, and - best of all - Doctor Who!

One of the things I always used to enjoy doing when we were playing Villains & Vigilantes almost 24/7 was convert comic and film characters into V&V characters, but Tim has made it into an artform over at the Emporium.

Major props also to the man for not only giving us stats for Night Of The Living Dead zombies in V&V (every game needs zombies), but also a mini-campaign, complete with guidelines on creating low-powered heroes to confront the hordes of undead.

And what makes this site - for a game that hasn't been published since 1987 (and some would argue has been overtaken by Mutants And Masterminds) - extra special is that it is still live and being updated.

I think it's time the Acrobatic Flea got off his butt and started to fight some crime, I'm itching for a superpowered smackdown.