The Sting of Death by Plain Brown Wrapper Games is an extensive adventure module for Mutants and Masterminds (2nd Edition). The product includes three versions of the adventure, two full-color (one normal, one landscape) and a printer friendly version (which still weighs in at 98-pages, 95 after you drop the cover and OGL).

The core plot of the adventure arc is that the powerful evil supernatural being known as Death?s Sting, thought killed in the 6th century, is about to return to the mortal world, as his cult has long predicted. The adventure has a nice progression starting with a bank robbery, into dealing with a cult and its summoned demons and finally a trip to Transylvania to prevent the return of Death?s Sting to the mortal world.

The adventure is broken down into seven chapters with an aftermath suggesting further adventures. The scenario follows a nice build up of danger and the GM is provided with advice to keep the game moving and on the plot while allowing deviance from the script presented. An interesting choice by the writer was to give the GM the option of including personalized members of the various innocent bystanders, police and mooks (cultists, time traveling Nazi super soldiers) encountered. These are highly detailed character descriptions giving full game statistics and personalities to otherwise faceless minions. An interesting design choice to allow more roleplaying opportunities then is usual for this genre.

The adventure is scaled for a standard group for four Power Level 10 heroes, the introduction says that it is easy to scale up or down but simply adding more mooks (as is the suggestion for the bank raid) does not a challenge for supers make. The later chapters lack even suggestions that basic to adjust for differing power levels leaving the GM on his own for that. So, a GM will have to look at each encounter and balance it against his team as best he can.

The adventure is supported by color maps, character illustration and a huge cast (everything from bank tellers to a cabal of Rumanian officers who lead the coup establishing the Greater Union of Transylvania) but it does not hang together as well as it should. Even if you do not use the adventure as written there are enough characters here that could be used as villains, mooks and background elements in your game world with only a few changes. However, if you are interested in pitting your superteam against occult horrors and cultists, this might be the adventure for you. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Lots of fully described characters, mostly non-superpowered.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This book provides 13 villains unified by the theme by having gained their abilities from supernatural or magical means (or, in some cases, are simply supernatural beings) ranging from simple lone villains to a godlike being that could destroy the world. In addition, there are statistics for various assistants and mooks (including zombie Avon ladies) that might be needed.

For me, most of these characters just do not fit in my mental comic book universe, they are too dark or too warped. I did like the more traditional comic book type characters like: Captain Skumbag, super thug for hire. Reverend Strange, a Victorian Satanist back from hell and seeking vengeance on those who defeated him, or their descendants. And the classically campy vampire, Contessa Von Blut.

One of the strengths of this collection is that each character comes with three, fairly extensive, scenario outlines which often tie in with other characters in the collection. This makes it easy to build an occult conspiracy subplot into a campaign.

A good collection if your M&M campaign runs to the dark and macabre, not so useful if you prefer your superheroes in four colors.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: See above.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: See above.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This book fulfills all it's goals...It's a good book FILLED with villains, each of which has a unique "air" to him, and seems worth using.

A lot of work was clearly put into making these guys neat...And they have nice teams, too...

Vampire Girl is working as the "Mystic Guide" for our team...<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Good villains, of all power levels, with unique plots.

I liked the dark humor...HK-47 and Black Whirlwind would love these guys...

Everything from PL8-PL20...For all games...<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Hm...there weren't enough PL10 villains who I could use...Some of the best ones are high PL...

Art wasn't the best in the world...but it gives good mental images...<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I wish I had read the reviews before buying this clip art pack (stupid stupid stupid!). 300dpi images are great IF you can print them bigger than 1" x 1". Most of these are very small and even at 300dpi and are too amaturish for a real print project.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The basic idea<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Quality of images for price<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

Words fail me, avoid at all costs. Bad art, poorly written, and just plain dull to read<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Virtually everything<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

These images are of pretty lousy quality. I won't be using any of them for anything. I'm highly disappointed in this product, which is supposedly an updated, improved version. I can't help wondering if I got the wrong product by mistake. There's definitely more than 69 weapons in the file.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The basic shapes of the weapons look like they'd be really good if the image quality were in any way decent.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The image quality is just plain bad. They're also very tiny.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Poor<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Ripped Off<br>

It is hard to comment on clip-art, as its use is limited. However, the art is decent, especially if you like guns. And I do.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

First of all, WOW! The publisher has really worked hard to maximize the different ways this product can be used by providing different versions for use on-screen, printer-friendly and so forth. And since I bought this product it's already been updated once.

The goal of this product was to make a lot of bad guys without a lot of new material, just using what's in the M&M book. And that's been done very well. The author's introduction makes it clear what sort of game world these villains come from, and so some head-scratching designs (like the not-funny clown villain) are explained there.

An explanation is not really an excuse, though. There are a fair chunk of these villains that are extremely specialized to a slightly light-hearted and/or self-consciously "sick" sense of humor and aren't easily translated into other worlds or tones. I'm not saying these bad guys should be taken out - on the contrary! I think that there should be multiple versions of these bad guys to be used, perhaps just with a few sentences for each version in a sidebar of some kind, as the M&M sourcebooks themselves do.

Another great strength of this product is the scenarios provided for each villain. Even for villains identified as "short-timers" - they come in for a rampage or a caper and then they're gone forever - are given a handful of well-fleshed-out ideas for GMs to steal.

Finally, attention is given to villain teams and organizations. These are well-done and well-themed.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Great PDF features, great scenarios, great teams, good villains in general. Awesome to see someone just use the M&M books "straight" as much as possible.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some villains don't seem appropriate for all worlds and are difficult to translate on your own.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Despite a weak presentation this is the most useful Superlink-product I ever bought. There are at least two unusual and inventive outlines for adventures with each villain, each outline at least half a page long. The villains themselves are much more inspired by real-world pop-culture and politics then by comic books and you don't have the feeling that it is a recombination of the same old cliches. (Although a few cliches like the misunderstood Indian are present.) The art is good enough to give your players an impression of their foes, although there exist 2 very different styles within the pages.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

You have to buy this set of spells because, well, you bought the others and they kicked kobold tail. Plus, if you're like me you want to have stuff that other gamers don't have.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I like this book. It has a lot of neat ideas. The artwork is decent (a lot better than I can do, so I can't complain). I recommend it to anybody. Even if people don't want to use what it contains, it is good to get ideas flowing in your mind.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: It is written in a way that the contents can be "ported" to any setting.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some of the items were mere "hacks" of equipment that already exists. I did not like some of the weapon stats (but that is easy enough to change).<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

A huge selection of weapons, some of them rather bizarre. Enough to never equip a sci-fi villain with the same weapon twice.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Sheer variety of options and ideas for weapons.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Formatting is very brown-paper. The statistics don't try to conform to any specific d20 implementation; Your Mileage May Vary depending on which d20 futuristic game you play, and some tweaknig may be necessary.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

I liked this product ok. It contains a great many really good ideas, and jam packs them all one package. It is missing a few things:

1) A table of weapons. One large table containing all the weapon stats. It's not like you don't have the space.

2) PDF Bookmarks.

It can also seem very redundant at times: There is a Arrow with sleep drug, Arrow with pain drug, Arrow with blinding drug, Arrow with Psychedelic drug, poison arrow, extra lethal poison arrow, super lethal poison arrow, plague arrow, Arrow with flesh eating virus. But there is no "Injector Arrow" with a capacity listed so I can add my own evil brew. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This is probably the best role playing game supplement I have ever seen. The author's rare understanding of human nature shows in his ability to create complicated and interesting "villians". He uses his knowledge of history and his remarkable feel for cultures (both from different parts of the U.S. and from around the world) to give them diverse and engaging backgrounds that explain how they became who and what they are.

At the reduced price I paid for this I should probably feel guilty practically stealing something of this quality. The section on the company Executive Solutions and the eight or so paranormal mercenaries they hire out are worth the 6.95 alone.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Villians both usable and inspired. Excellent adventure suggestions. Writing so good I have been showing parts of it to non-gamers as entertaining short stories.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: That I am still waiting for "More Bad Guys" (Ok thats not much of a gripe. Work this good takes time.)<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Ugh, an incredible waste of my money. Game mechanics were not standardized, spells were poorly designed. I've wasted money buying it, I actually deleted the product.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Pretty much nothing<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Poor<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Ripped Off<br>