I had the same impression, Chris. Especially due to the fact that there are no other posts or reviews of the "reviewer". :D
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Well, I recall something similar happened with "The World of Avlis", when Brigand Publishing released a PF RPG table-top version of that campaign world. There were a couple of Avlis fans who found the boards, signed up, and gave effulsive reviews, based on their experience with the on-line version.
This seems different. This isn't a campaign setting that has generated a fan base; it's an adventure, and one very recently released at that. The "reviewer" loads his comments with glittering generalities: "The adventure is highly adaptable ... the main villain, his henchmen and the monster gang are very well designed villains ... well designed location maps ... plot seeds are both interesting and hilarious ... this adventure is well written..."
It does have the most ridiculous title I've encountered in the past several years.
The adventure is for Hero Games' superhero game, but "not necessarily Champions." I thought Champions was Hero Games' superhero game.
Yeah, I thankfully read your review of "The World of Avlis" when looking for stuff to buy and review and subsequently steered clear of the book - which I am, at least mechanically from what I've managed to glean from the posts, very grateful for, s it seems to incorporate everything I dislike in a setting in one "sweet" book.
For this review alone, you have my gratitude - your precise formulations have been an inspiration for me.
This file, though, is one step beyond - an interesting title combined with a blatant company-hack-review that can only be considered uninformative and plastered with generalities I've yet to employ for any file I've had the pleasure of reviewing.
This "Review" is lacking in any informative quality but praise - bad work,(if done by) hacks, tough luck.
Dave Mattingly from BlackWyrm here.
I'm not sure who ThreadingFate is, but it's not me. To my knowledge, no one involved with BlackWyrm wrote that review.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Howdy, Dave. Thanks for posting. Nice choice of avatar.
While we have you here, is there anything about the product that you'd like to mention?
The reviewer asserted "'Pretty Hate Machines' is an adventure designed for Hero System in a super-hero campaign setting, though not necessarily Champions." I appreciate that these aren't your words, but do you know what the reviewer was driving at? Is this written with Champions in mind, or is it a more generic, system-soft adventure?
Well, I wrote the adventure, but not the review. So I'll just one up Dave. What do you want to know? I'll answer any questions you have about it. There will be an Atomic Array podcast in a few months on it.
(Unkindness, the other one, got first billing because it was released first, so that will be Atomic Array 49.)
Fire away.
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Sure, so, the reviewer asserted "'Pretty Hate Machines' is an adventure designed for Hero System in a super-hero campaign setting, though not necessarily Champions." I appreciate that these aren't your words, but do you know what the reviewer was driving at? How heavily does the adventure tie into the default Champions NPCs and setting?
Is this written with Champions in mind, or is it a more generic, system-soft adventure?
Why such a strange title?
I put together with the adventure so that with scaling up or down, it can easily be rewritten to work in Pulp Hero, Dark Champions, Horror Hero, or the like. Several of these genres are given a paragraph or so of coverage in the text of the adventure.
The adventure is not tied to the CU at all. I'm a big fan of Champions, I've been playing it since 1981. However, I try to make things a little more generic than that, as I'm planning on tying everything I do together and sourcebooking it eventually. These are little slices of my home game. It's easier than double playtesting, for one thing.
It's written with Champions in mind, and that's where all the default stats are. Things are pretty easy to adjust, in terms of power level, and the adventure mostly takes care of that for you, though obviously every GM will have to tweak things.
Why such a strange title?
1)It grabbed you, didn't it?
2)Taking things from pop culture and making them into adventure titles while simultaneously making them plot relevant makes people curious. Clearly, it worked, because you're asking me this question.
The concept behind the adventure is this: Mr. Hideous, the self-titled Ugliest Man in the World, has come to your campaign city with his gang of similarly ugly, weird, and deformed super-freaks. His goal is to make everyone as ugly as he is, and he's got the tools to do it, too.
The adventure is sort of designed to be a "Tomb of Horrors" for Champions, in terms of how deadly it is.
One of the things that Champions as a game was always missing was a Joker or Two-Face like villain that was designed with a supervillain team behind him. After all, the Joker and Two-Face are really cool, but they don't fight a six person group of player characters.
These guys are designed to do that. They work as a team, they fight as a team, and the heroes will have to develop better teamwork than Mr. Hideous and his gang if they want to succeed and save their city from his fiendish plan.
The adventure takes the PC's from a deadly encounter at a fashion show through a series of progessively more dangerous environments. The adventure is set up so that the characters aren't railroaded, and emphasizes creative thinking while preparing the GM for a lot of things the heroes might try. It's very open-ended, a good quality when you have guys who can lift trucks and fire bolts of fire out of their fingertips.
The adventure takes the PC's to a deadly battle in an oil refinery and culminates in a deadly battle on a blimp high above...well...that would be telling too much, since your players read these things too.
It contains a ton of maps that are useful for just about any system, along with detailed descriptions of NPCs, powered and non-powered to flesh out various locations.
The artist, Philippe St. Gerard, did a fantastic job of capturing these villains and rendering them, especially the cover, for which he should win an award. However, it his is quote that I will close with.
"The thing I really liked about this adventure was that everything was extremely dangerous. No matter where you turn, it seems like there's no end of things which explode."
So do you have any more questions I can answer about this product? I love to talk with people about my products. It's fun.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Honestly, Balabanto, it doesn't sound like my cup of tea. "Tomb of Horrors" is known for its enormous body-count; if you get through the adventure with fewer than two TPKs, you're probably cheating. I think that the Champions genre is about PCs being heroes, not dying in deadly battle after deadly battle.
But: congratulations on getting published, and it looks like you have at least one fan.
Honestly, Balabanto, it doesn't sound like my cup of tea. "Tomb of Horrors" is known for its enormous body-count; if you get through the adventure with fewer than two TPKs, you're probably cheating. I think that the Champions genre is about PCs being heroes, not dying in deadly battle after deadly battle.
But: congratulations on getting published, and it looks like you have at least one fan.
Or your PC's could simply be smart. No one died when I playtested it. They were extremely lucky. Success and failure are measured very differently in Champions. Some villains were captured, others escaped. They made a few very good critical decisions at key points that helped them a lot.
Pick it up. You won't be disappointed. The nice thing about Champions is that if you think something's too dangerous, you can always scale it back.
Find out more about Pretty Hate Machines at
www.atomicarray.com
A new review of this product is available at
http://gamecryer.com/2011/04/29/pretty-hate-machines/#more-1258