The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Let me first of all state that I'm a fan boy of the (always 4 months late) Astro City comics. So in order to get my Astro City fix and hold off withdrawl, I started looking for alternatives, and heard about San Angelo: City of Heroes. Labeled a "city/campaign book for Champions", it ended up being a lot more and a little less than I was expecting.

San Angelo is a very large city on the Western coast of the United States. It is unrelated to the official Champions setting, although there would be little problem in combining the two. Most super powers were caused by a pair of artificially created singularities, which have affected not only people in the present, but also throughout the past and future, and maybe through other dimensions. Magic exists in the shadows of the setting, and aliens are not known to exist. Technology is mostly similar to the real world, although a few companies and research labs have more advanced devices, allowing for Iron Man type armor and other super gadgets. And PCs are the most important supers in the city. But it is –who- these supers are as people that is more important than their lists of powers.

That last bit is to me, the single most interesting part of the entire idea. In other games this is overlooked or even outright discarded. In Aberrant, every super is a conspiratorial egoist. In Brave New World, every super is a conspiratorial activist. Here, we have a super cop who is just a plain cop; he has no secret agenda beyond making money to feed the family and doing a good job as a law officer. Villains in San Angelo are like Amok, a homeless alcoholic whose super strength and drunken rages drive him to destroy vast amounts of property and drink even more to escape his guilt, or the teenage runaway Phobia. That's not to say there aren't more stereotypical heroes and villains, but rather that there are –all- kinds of supers active in the city. People who use their powers to help themselves as house painters, or as paramedics, or as pick pockets. San Angelo isn't a place where every super travels to Addis Abba for drunken orgies or secretly plots the right path of American government. It's a bit more realistic than that. In San Angelo, characters have realistic motives and live in a (mostly) realistic world. Not every super wants to go off and have grand cosmic adventures, and normals are interesting and important.

But what about the actual contents of the book itself?

Basically, San Angelo takes an approach similar to that used in the Shadowrun region books by Nigel Findley (and others). Almost anything you could want to know is in here. Want to know what the religious breakdown is like? 43% are Catholic, 2.1% are Buddhist, etc. etc. with 41% attending religious services a week. What's the 7th most successful manufacturer in the city? The Taiyo Corporation, whose San Angelo plant employs 4,485 people in the manufacture of computer parts, is ranked number 7 of course. What is a good AM country station? FKHA 1250AM. How many robberies occur in the city? 8,571 in 1997, which is 23 a day and roughly 1 every hour. Keep in mind however, that this is an abridged description. I didn't go into Taiyo Corp's profits, or where the religious buildings were, or who KFHA is partnered with. To be blunt, almost anything you could want to know about the city is detailed. There's also a very nice variety of places, with the various Catholic and Orthodox churches of Cathedral Square, the Temple of Atlantis building (a new age cult, not merpeople), and occult bookstores abound for religious/supernatural feel, high tech firms and labs for technical types, and a thriving collection of gangs and martial arts instructors abound for kung-fu fighters. It feels like a bit of a hodge podge collection some times, but given San Angelo's mutli-ethnic demographics and background, it makes sense for the city to have a little bit of everything.

Art, layout, and editing are all good, with lots of flavor text and a minimal amount of art. This isn't a book that wastes pages on pictures of nameless people standing around. And for those used to the edit ing kuality of oter Chaaampions boo , San Angelo is a nice change with only a handful of typos. I didn't double-check the NPC numbers, but they at least looked right on a straight reading. No index for those who want one, but the Table of Contents is pretty good and do okay for those who need an index. I know who you are, so quit frowning and just be glad somebody at least bothered to make a useful ToC.

Downsides? It's a great place to live, but I don't think I'd want to visit. The amount of detail and depth involved in this setting really requires a group of people to play an extended campaign in the city before they could really experience just how eclectic the city is. To really get your money's worth out of the product, you'd have to actually have your game centered around the setting itself. I know that sounds like a given, but most region books I've seen (even those detailed Shadowrun books) felt more like places where you could soak all the sights and sounds in a short campaign and then move on. Maybe this is a praise for how detailed the place is, maybe it's a complaint of minor limitation. I don't really know. The only other real problem I had was in the mundane parts. Don't get me wrong, the book is well written and I'm glad to see normal people being considered as important as supers, but after a while I got bored reading about completely normal people with completely normal jobs and the city's completely normal legal system. I personally kept wishing for just a little more info on how supers had affected people and places while they were being described, in addition to knowing how many students are enrolled in how many colleges.

Who should buy this book? The amount of Champions specific rules and stats are quite minimal really, and shouldn't be seen as a problem. Or a selling angle either really. Basically, anyone looking for a detailed modern American city setting, for any game, could do a lot worse than this book. Aberrant gamers could add the influence of Utopia and the Teragen easily enough, and the singularities could be rumored to be responsible for nova existence. Brave New World fans could turn San Angelo into a federal stronghold with some changes, or more likely a somewhat anarchistic city run by the Defiants. A few changes to the setting and mood, and it would be an excellent setting for Vampire: the Masquerade. With a lot of work San Angelo could even be used for Deadlands Hell on Earth; maybe it is a major trading post outside of the Great Maze. It would also fit in nicely for a Feng Shui game, again with some minor changes to setting and mood. It's not quite a generic region book, but it could be, and in this regard, the seeming sparseness of super influence I was whining about before is actually a strength in adapting the book to other genres and games.

As a supplement to Champions however, it's a shining gem, and any fan of the game should check it out.

Oh yeah, and check out Astro City too!

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

San Angelo: City of Heroes
Author: Patrick Sweeney Category: game Company/Publisher: Gold Rush Games Line: San Angelo/Champions Cost: $25 Page count: 256 Capsule Review by Shelby Babb on 12/05/00. Genre tags: Modern day Superhero	Let me first of all state that I'm a fan boy of the (always 4 months late) Astro City comics. So in order to get my Astro City fix and hold off withdrawl, I started looking for alternatives, and heard about San Angelo: City of Heroes. Labeled a "city/campaign book for Champions", it ended up being a lot more and a little less than I was expecting. San Angelo is a very large city on the Western coast of the United States. It is unrelated to the official Champions setting, although there would be little problem in combining the two. Most super powers were caused by a pair of artificially created singularities, which have affected not only people in the present, but also throughout the past and future, and maybe through other dimensions. Magic exists in the shadows of the setting, and aliens are not known to exist. Technology is mostly similar to the real world, although a few companies and research labs have more advanced devices, allowing for Iron Man type armor and other super gadgets. And PCs are the most important supers in the city. But it is –who- these supers are as people that is more important than their lists of powers. That last bit is to me, the single most interesting part of the entire idea. In other games this is overlooked or even outright discarded. In Aberrant, every super is a conspiratorial egoist. In Brave New World, every super is a conspiratorial activist. Here, we have a super cop who is just a plain cop; he has no secret agenda beyond making money to feed the family and doing a good job as a law officer. Villains in San Angelo are like Amok, a homeless alcoholic whose super strength and drunken rages drive him to destroy vast amounts of property and drink even more to escape his guilt, or the teenage runaway Phobia. That's not to say there aren't more stereotypical heroes and villains, but rather that there are –all- kinds of supers active in the city. People who use their powers to help themselves as house painters, or as paramedics, or as pick pockets. San Angelo isn't a place where every super travels to Addis Abba for drunken orgies or secretly plots the right path of American government. It's a bit more realistic than that. In San Angelo, characters have realistic motives and live in a (mostly) realistic world. Not every super wants to go off and have grand cosmic adventures, and normals are interesting and important. But what about the actual contents of the book itself? Basically, San Angelo takes an approach similar to that used in the Shadowrun region books by Nigel Findley (and others). Almost anything you could want to know is in here. Want to know what the religious breakdown is like? 43% are Catholic, 2.1% are Buddhist, etc. etc. with 41% attending religious services a week. What's the 7th most successful manufacturer in the city? The Taiyo Corporation, whose San Angelo plant employs 4,485 people in the manufacture of computer parts, is ranked number 7 of course. What is a good AM country station? FKHA 1250AM. How many robberies occur in the city? 8,571 in 1997, which is 23 a day and roughly 1 every hour. Keep in mind however, that this is an abridged description. I didn't go into Taiyo Corp's profits, or where the religious buildings were, or who KFHA is partnered with. To be blunt, almost anything you could want to know about the city is detailed. There's also a very nice variety of places, with the various Catholic and Orthodox churches of Cathedral Square, the Temple of Atlantis building (a new age cult, not merpeople), and occult bookstores abound for religious/supernatural feel, high tech firms and labs for technical types, and a thriving collection of gangs and martial arts instructors abound for kung-fu fighters. It feels like a bit of a hodge podge collection some times, but given San Angelo's mutli-ethnic demographics and background, it makes sense for the city to have a little bit of everything. Art, layout, and editing are all good, with lots of flavor text and a minimal amount of art. This isn't a book that wastes pages on pictures of nameless people standing around. And for those used to the edit ing kuality of oter Chaaampions boo , San Angelo is a nice change with only a handful of typos. I didn't double-check the NPC numbers, but they at least looked right on a straight reading. No index for those who want one, but the Table of Contents is pretty good and do okay for those who need an index. I know who you are, so quit frowning and just be glad somebody at least bothered to make a useful ToC. Downsides? It's a great place to live, but I don't think I'd want to visit. The amount of detail and depth involved in this setting really requires a group of people to play an extended campaign in the city before they could really experience just how eclectic the city is. To really get your money's worth out of the product, you'd have to actually have your game centered around the setting itself. I know that sounds like a given, but most region books I've seen (even those detailed Shadowrun books) felt more like places where you could soak all the sights and sounds in a short campaign and then move on. Maybe this is a praise for how detailed the place is, maybe it's a complaint of minor limitation. I don't really know. The only other real problem I had was in the mundane parts. Don't get me wrong, the book is well written and I'm glad to see normal people being considered as important as supers, but after a while I got bored reading about completely normal people with completely normal jobs and the city's completely normal legal system. I personally kept wishing for just a little more info on how supers had affected people and places while they were being described, in addition to knowing how many students are enrolled in how many colleges. Who should buy this book? The amount of Champions specific rules and stats are quite minimal really, and shouldn't be seen as a problem. Or a selling angle either really. Basically, anyone looking for a detailed modern American city setting, for any game, could do a lot worse than this book. Aberrant gamers could add the influence of Utopia and the Teragen easily enough, and the singularities could be rumored to be responsible for nova existence. Brave New World fans could turn San Angelo into a federal stronghold with some changes, or more likely a somewhat anarchistic city run by the Defiants. A few changes to the setting and mood, and it would be an excellent setting for Vampire: the Masquerade. With a lot of work San Angelo could even be used for Deadlands Hell on Earth; maybe it is a major trading post outside of the Great Maze. It would also fit in nicely for a Feng Shui game, again with some minor changes to setting and mood. It's not quite a generic region book, but it could be, and in this regard, the seeming sparseness of super influence I was whining about before is actually a strength in adapting the book to other genres and games. As a supplement to Champions however, it's a shining gem, and any fan of the game should check it out. Oh yeah, and check out Astro City too! Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)