A Solid Collection of Comic-Book Characters and Scenarios
THE GOOD:
I bought this book for the adventures. We've played through "Evilution Unchained," which features a mad scientist and genetic mutants who wreak havoc throughout the city. The plot can be played in a simplified way (which is what we did) or expanded to include multiple scenes of investigation, clue-gathering, negotiation, and side-quests. Each new super-powered character also includes variant adventure scenarios to spark your imagination. My group particularly enjoyed the "Calico Bat" and "Gator Boi" animal cross-breeds.
The other adventures (which I've read through but have not played) offer additional characters and settings, with at least one of them setting up some dramatic tasks and other alternative SWADE gameplay mechanics to keep things varied and interesting. As with "EU," I imagine my group will pick-and-choose parts of each, but that's part of what makes this book a good value: your group can pick-and-choose or just play straight-through. CCS#1 lends itself to both.
Part of what makes this work is the thoughtful layout of the characters' stat-blocks. Each character is given a whole page (sometimes two) to themselves, so printing is clear and reading is fairly easy. The Dober-Men, for example, get a single page to themselves: real names, alignment, motivations, attributes, skills, and more... all on one easy-to-print and easy-to-read page. This is a big improvement over some SWADE monster books that haphazardly split stat-blocks over two pages, forcing you to print too much or to swipe back-and-forth in your PDFs. I like PDFs, but I also like to have printed stat-blocks at the table. I was able to do my printing-prep for today's session in less than five minutes. Campaign City Supers really saved me some time and effort!
THE MID:
Honestly, most of my criticisms of this book aren't really criticisms; they're wish-lists.
I wish the book made more of an effort to appeal to the different levels of SWADE Supers play. I'd like to have had a Level II adventure and at least one that really went crazy at Level V. However, if they had to aim, aiming chiefly at Level III (as "Evilution Unchained" does) makes the most sense for classic super-hero play.
I wish the adventures went to more trouble to include SWADE options like Chases and Dramatic Tasks. There are a couple, but I find those particularly hard to write/GM, and more pre-planned ones would have provided some easy variety to my table.
I could go on with my wish-lists, but they really just amount to personal preferences and nit-picking. I generally found "Evilution Unchained" to be a great resource.
THE BAD:
I'd have to dig pretty deep to find something to really complain about here, so I'm not going to. Nothing terrible jumped out at me when we were playing, and as I said above, most of my "criticisms" come down more to differences in play/GM-style than they do to quality issues.
CONCLUSION:
The more I GM and read about RPGs, the more I come to understand that while adventure/campaign books like this CAN be run as written, most of them are used as toolboxes for GMs to pull from. For $15 as a PDF (at time of this review, May 2024), Campaign City Supers #1 provides a ridiculous amount of content that can easily be run from a laptop or a tablet with no printing or minimal printing.
While I can imagine improvements to the book, none of my "wish list" items are a good reason to skip this book. I plan on playing at least two more scenarios (out of the six provided), and the time I'll save from using these instead of planning my own is definitely worth the price of admission. I look forward to Campaign City Supers #2!
(End Note: I originally purchased the hardcover, which currently comes with the PDF included at no extra cost. I am very happy with the quality of the printed book. My book was damaged in shipping, and DTRPG was a dream to work with. Fast, polite, and helpful customer service took care of me. If you're thinking of buying physical+PDF, I'd strongly recommend it in this case. Campaign City Supers #1 is the exact same size as my other Pinnacle-produced SWADE books, and it looks great on my bookshelf next to my Super Powers Companion!)
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