VIPER is Champions’ default villain group, spawning dozens of villains over the game’s history, and providing a steady stream of cannon fodder to plot everything from bank robberies to world domination.

In 1993, Hero Games released a sourcebook for VIPER, outlining the members of that evil organization, and a number of ways for them to be used in a game.

Of course, that was ten years, three companies and one edition ago. So now the reconstituted Hero Games has produced a new VIPER supplement for use with Hero System 5th Edition.

VIPER’s history and leadership has been revamped for the new version. The origin of the organization is somewhat less silly this time around, but not significantly. Instead of VIPER being the minions of a slacker space probe, they serve an African snake god. Well, that’s a little better. Sure, it’s not quite “ex-Nazis” or “Amway”, but it’ll do.

Excessively clever origin aside, VIPER evolves in a fairly straightforward manner. The book provides some info that would be helpful in using VIPER and its forebears in a historical context (Pulp, WWII, Silver and Disco age games), although a few examples of equipment or vehicles for historical settings would have been nice.

But the VIPER sourcebook is designed to present the organization for a modern setting, and it does a fairly good job of that.

The biggest difference between this book and the original is the focus. The original had info on VIPER agents and equipment, and a lot of details on the super-forces VIPER employed.

So may super-villains worked for VIPER that it became a little supers heavy. The original VIPER sourcebook, for example, had almost 80 pages of super-villain stats. This revision covers Dragon Branch in 20 pages. And the two books have almost identical page counts.

The supers include a few standard Champs villains (HalfJack, Ripper & Oculon), as well as a revised Viperia. The improvements to Viperia are almost shocking. The previous version was somewhat sub-par, but the new one is a great character. The art, the stats, the history, they’re all improvements on the original, and make her a great threat to any superhero or team.

So what did they add instead of characters and adventures? Why, information about VIPER, of course!

VIPER agents are expanded upon, with dozens of package deals allowing the construction of VIPER agents from the greenest grunts (no pun intended) to the elite Golden Serpents. There’s also a list of equipment, from knives to pistols, rifles, flamethrowers and other implements of personal destruction.

The chapter lists a selection of defensive equipment and personal transport devices as well as vehicles. They look okay, although the Dragon Jet is a little clumsy looking.

There’s a quick reference chart for the various weapons, which is useful. It would have been better located in an appendix, rather than in the centre of the book.

Lots of information is included on the care and feeding of a VIPER nest, as well as several sample nests and info on their leaders.

The package deals for the various VIPER specialties are a nice variety. There are a number of standard combat specialists (snipers, melee/martial arts specialists, and knife fighters), in addition to technical and intelligence packages.

Intelligence VIPERs handle interaction with the media and organized crime, or are specially trained to perform surveillance

Technical agents handle, as you’ve figured, technical jobs such as computers and medicine. One technical package of interest is the Crime Evasion Specialist, an agent whose job is to destroy evidence left behind at the scene of a crime. It might have sounded a bit better as Crime Scene Eliminator, but that’s a bit too much a cheesy pop culture reference.

Each of the divisions has a basic level I package, and level II packages that build on top of those.

On top of those, there are some ‘special’ viper package deals. These include biologically engineered semi-super agents, a package for nest leader, a serpent mage package, magician VIPERs, members of the Serpent Cult, and a package for VIPER ninjas. No pirates, however.

The gamemaster info for running VIPER is also useful. It takes certain source/game issues such as hostage taking and over-enthusiastic telepaths and explains how to avoid related pitfalls in their use. There are also guidelines for running agent battles that don’t take longer than some Hollywood marriages.

The gamemaster chapters also include information on how to run VIPER in various genres (Champions, Pulp, SF, Fantasy) and as heroes (including the VIPERs in the Dust campaign).

The Super Agents genre is handled in little more than a sidebar, which is a little disappointing. It also seems more oriented to being a GI Joe type game, rather than a S.H.I.E.L.D. or UNTIL type game.

The book is reasonably clear of gaffes, although the division patches includes a patch for Moccasin division, of which there is none. The index also needs a little work, since none of the divisions are mentioned in it. The margins are a bit on the generous side, although a lot of the art is placed into the margins, and there are a fair number of sidebars.

The book is a worthy successor to the original VIPER sourcebook, and contains a lot of info on VIPER, and how to use it in your games.

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