Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/09/review-vigilante-city-2-villains-guide.html

Book 2 of the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City core rules is the Villain's Guide and it was shipped out with Core Rules #1. It's Vigilante City week, so let us get to it.

Vigilante City #2 Villain's Guide

PDF and softcover book. 300 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. For the purposes of this review, I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and the soft-cover books I picked up either via Kickstarter or from Bloat Games' own store.

This book builds off of the Vigilante City #1 Core Rules. While it says "Villain's Guide" on the cover it is really much more than that.

Victory City

We start out with the titular Vigilante City, "Victory City." We get the layout of the city and its districts. We get a great map of the city (and it is reprinted on the back).

Since this is street-level supers we get a lot of gangs. The gangs do feel like what you might get if you took the gangs from the movie The Warriors and let them populate Gotham City from Batman the Animated Series for a while. Yeah, it is every bit as fun as it sounds. I bet the creative team had a blast working on this.

There is a great section following about building your own city or adding to Victory City. Personally, I would rather add to the existing VC. I mean nearly every superhero story is defined by the city they live in. So for a Vigilante City game, I am going to want to play in Vigilante City.

Anthropomorph Island is our next big section and it is an island of anthropomorphic animals. Not all of them are teenage. It's a neat little addition to the superhero mythos.

There are a couple of sample adventures, which is nice.

Rogues Gallery

At about 75 pages in we finally get the Rogue Gallery. Ok, "finally" is too strong. Everything up to this point has been great. But let's be honest it is the bad guys that are the most fun.

Nearly 90s pages of all sorts of bad guys (and girls and animals) here and they are all fun.

There are a couple of local heroes, some sample characters, and a bunch NPCs.

Bestiary

There is a bestiary that covers normal animals to were-beasts and other threats. Bigfoot is even here! Note: The Dark Places & Demogorgons Cryptid Manual would work great with this.

Community Content

I think this material was part of the Kickstarter where backers could submit heroes and villains of their own. This is that section and it is a lot of fun really. I mean really, we are getting an official version of the Acrobatic Flea? Worth the price of the book alone!

This book could have been also called the GM's Guide, with all the material here. It is great stuff. Can you play VC without it? Sure. And you can also have Batman without the Joker and Gotham City but it would not be as much fun.

I can see this game taking the place of Icons or Villains & Vigilantes in my life. It is at the intersection of them both for me.

Sometimes you've got to back off of something to really appreciate it such is the case of recently with Bloat Games SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City -Villain's Guide PDF. This book clocks in at three hundred pages of OSR super villain goodness so in other words this is the Dungeon Master's Guide for the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City Rpg. This is the DM tool kit book for the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City Rpg. And it does a solid job of providing the dungeon master everything they need to build up their own unstable society on the edge of collapse. This book gives you all of the tools to torture your player's super heroes in a customized setting. The DM is given a selection of villain-based Adventure Seeds that they can blossom into full adventures, easy random NPC and Villain Generation Tables, along with the Mutant Island Adventure/optional setting. The SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide is designed to mimic the X-men, Spider-man and TMNT cartoons of the 1990's & in that sense it succeeds because it takes the D20 Modern roots of its OGL to its barest of bones. Then it works all of its tools around the entire book to give you as the DM an actual usable set of tools to construct the campaign that you want. The SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide is the perfect compliment book for the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City Rpg. The SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide supports & expands the dungeon master's options at the table top level for constructing a super hero campaign setting that they want & it does it well. Given the tools & systems that are available with the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide I would use the Mutant Island Adventure/optional setting that's in the book & expand upon it by back dovetailing into the Dark Places & Demogorgons rpg with a UFO twist or two. The DARK PLACES & DEMOGORGONS - The UFO Investigator's Handbook

has some very need parts & pieces that hook right up with the Villain's Guide Mutant Island setting allowing the DM to connect the two game systems & settings with an extraterrestrial twist. Could the Greys or whatever aliens your using be turning the heroes back yard city into a test bed for their latest experiments?! Is there more behind the recent kid disappearances in the hero's home town or city? Could those super powered children that have been wrecking havoc be the product of aliens using your city or Earth as weapons testing facility? The SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide has all of the tools at hand to make this happen & think is well worth the price of admission & its the perfect compliment to the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City Rpg. Really think that Bloat Games has a winner on their hands & that the SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City - Villain’s Guide is worth your time & money.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Blog Want more OSR original content? Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/