Introduction
Cosmic style superheroes have long since been a staple of the comicbooks, even dating back to Superman himself. With the seed planted, this genre-within-a-genre continued to grow and evolve as the decades progressed. Cosmic superheroics took a giant leap to the forefront in 1966, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Silver Surfer. Kirby continued to ride the wave when he left Marvel and created the New Gods for DC in 1971, paving the way for other creators such as Jim Starlin, who began his groundbreaking work on Captain Marvel in 1973 and Warlock just two years later. The door was open and a new sci-fi/superhero hybrid had emerged. Over the years, more and more cosmic-scale comicbook series came into existence, from the Guardians of the Galaxy to Sandman and, more recently, the Authority.Unfortunately, this type of campaign has only been glossed over in superhero RPGs... until now, that is! Above and Beyond is an 84 page M&M Superlink product, e-published by Valent Games in PDF format and written by Colin Fredericks. It attempts to provide players and Game Masters with all the necessary tools to bring their gaming to the stars. A nice touch was provided by making much of the material useful for nearly any superhero RPG, in the form of "essays".
Content
The writing found in Above and Beyond is light, breezy and conversational, which suits me just fine for a product along these lines. The sci-fi superhero milieu wouldn't lend itself well to being discussed in a dry, "we're trying to write stereo instructions" fashion. It's all about having fun in space, dammit, and Mr. Fredericks has a style of writing that emphasizes that.As a side note, I really feel the product could've benefitted from using a chapter title to go along with the chapter number. While the introduction presents a quick overview of each chapter, this would've just been a lot more convenient. Anyway...
Chapter One discusses the cosmic hero's lot in life... his place in the universe. It serves as a fantastic jumping-on point for those who aren't terribly well-versed in sci-fi superheroics by establishing many of the standards of the genre. Heck, it's even useful for those of us who possess knowledge of superheroes of this magnitude. After all, it's one thing to have read a bundle of cosmic comicbooks, but it's quite another to have thought about exactly how these characters are different than their more earth-bound counterparts. The text herein stresses that they probably view humanity in a very different light and have entirely different priorities. The chapter closes with a detailed section that deals with cosmic baddies, giving readers a handful of useful categories of cretins to use as a reference point.
Chapter Two is where things start moving toward the meta-game aspects of the genre, though I feel at some points, it was unnecessary. For example, the categorization of "deep" characters (i.e., characters who possess one extremely powerful powers) and "broad" characters (i.e., characters who possess a ton of powers). To me, this was mostly pointless, as I don't want to classify characters in such a way. On the brighter side, most of what was given is stuff that I found worthwhile -- genre-specific character hooks, how to deal with cosmic Saving Throws, ideas for coping with potentially unbalancing powers and even a list of 101 plot seeds that range from uninspired to really friggin' nifty.
Chapter Three is my favorite of the bunch. To borrow a term used by Mr. Fredericks, this chapter gives players and GMs various "control knobs" to adjust in order to make the campaign better fit their gaming styles. It discusses how important Earth is in the game, how much comedic overtone is allowed, religions, and even how easily the characters can change the universe. Good, juicy stuff that can (in many instances) be used for more traditional superhero campaigns as well.
Chapter Four starts getting crunchier, but never loses its entertainment value. Too many products shift from an entertaining tone to one that's more utilitarian when they begin to get rulesy. Thankfully, Mr. Fredericks sidesteps this pitfall altogether. Anyway, this chapter gives players and GMs plenty of new nuggets to munch on as well as expanding the existing M&M fixtures to accommodate the cosmic end of the spectrum. Essays and such are great, but this book would've been empty without something like this. No worries, it delivers in spades. A great deal of thought went into all this, especially with such well thought out Feats as Evolving Power and Sentient Power. My favorite cosmic Feat is Remember the Trashcan, which allows a time travelling character to pull a "Bill & Ted" so that he can zip back in time to remind himself to leave an item in a certain place so that he can snag it in the present. Fun stuff. The new cosmic powers are fairly derivative of existing ones, but that doesn't bother me. It makes nice use of the toolkit approach given in the M&M rulebook. This chapter also contains rules and suggestions for allowing powerful characters duke it out with entire armies. I haven't tried these rules out first-hand, so I cannot attest to how fluid they are in practice, but they seem to be pretty logical and intuitive.
Chapter Five is your hook-up for pre-made cosmic NPCs. As with most gaming books that contain such a section, the characters in Above and Beyond are hit and miss, but they hit more often than miss. All in all, Valent Games covers all the bases, giving readers detailed archetypal cosmic NPCs, from the eternal entity (the Creature From Beyond) to the the time travelling weirdo (Timepiece). Nothing really innovative, and I'd have preferred more backstory info, but overall, the mix is rock solid. I do wish there would've been more character art, but I understand budget restrictions, so I won't hold that against this product.
Chapter Six presents the reader with a various types of locations characters can visit as well as some bases that the PCs can move into if it suits their fancy (with the GM's permission, of course). All of these fill the tradition roles of the places most often found in the sci-fi superhero comics and manages to put a twist on most of them.
Art
Let's start with the cover by Trever Harwell, which depicts a suitably heroic figure hovering in the depths of space, as a gargantuan, evil entity with glowing eyes begins to grip Earth with one of his hands. The artist used an actual photo of our swell lil' planet to good effect in the piece. All the classic elements of the cosmic comicbooks are in place. It's bold and dynamic and is truly representative of the genre. To me, that speaks volumes! I get annoyed at covers that don't match or reflect the book and I can happily say that this one does its job admirably.The interior art gets a tad dodgier though. Sometimes, it's really good (like the piece on page 26, in which we see a Cthulhu Mythos-inspired gibbering creature causing panic among the populace) and sometimes it's pretty weak (like the piece on page 60, wherein the artist seemingly forgot about anatomy). I'm not meaning to sound harsh because, like I stated, some of the interior artwork rocks on toast. It's hard to believe that it's the same artist (Benjamin D. Richards) throughout. Such a drastic difference in quality from one piece to another.
Layout
The layout of Above and Beyond is quite good all in all. It's not fancy or anything, but I couldn't care less. As long as it's easy to read and doesn't look garish, I'm a happy little camper. This product satisfies those requirements for the most part. I do have a couple minor gripes, but I'll get to those here in a few. First, I want to discuss what it actually looks like.The main text is double columed, using 12-point Times Roman font. The headers, sub-headers and so on are all done in the Papyrus font, underlined. Sidebars/textboxes/whatever the heck you want to call them are peppered throughout the book, keeping it from being monotonous and bland. Again, not fancy, but functional.
I have no problem with most of it. It's clean and it doesn't give me a headache to look at. My primary hang-up is really minor, but it did detract from the organization of the book. You see, the Papyrus font is used for all larger text and it's always underlined. This into itself isn't a big deal, but the fact that the sub-headers (I guess they're called) is the same font as the headers and that there's only marginal size difference makes it difficult to tell what's what at times. They would've been better off using, say, 16-point Times Roman for the sub-headers. I'm probably making it sound more problematic than it really is, because there were only a few places that made me scratch my head while reading it.
Ending this section on a high note, I'd like to commend Valent Games for putting together a nice index section. It's divided up into multiple categories (Topic Index, Art Index, New Powers Index, etc.), ensuring that you can find what you're looking for without a problem.
Final Analysis
Above and Beyond set out to cover an often overlooked area of comicbook superheroes and give it the full treatment. To say that it succeeds is an unforgivable understatement! The product retains a tight focus from beginning to end and never deviates from its path. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Frederick's writing style is easy to fall in love with. It's precise without being dull and it's, above all else, entertaining.As a reviewer, I refuse to write up a review of a product until I've played it three times. Unfortunately, with my game company (Spectrum Games) staying so busy lately, it took me awhile to get the three game sessions played out. So, I'd like to apologize to Colin for the wait.
For what it's worth, the games we played using Above and Beyond were a hoot! To be honest, the book kind of faded into the background shortly after the first game session began, which is a good thing. It integrates seamlessly into the game so that, even though you're using the info you read, you aren't interrupting the game in order to flip through its pages. Above and Beyond is a useful product that doesn't have to be constantly rammed down the group's throat every minute of the game.
It's not a perfect product and I won't pretend that it is. There are a few warts and blemishes scattered around (as discussed in the review above), but the good outweighs the bad by a large margin. Every product has weaknesses, so that has to be factored in. I've never seen a perfect game or sourcebook yet and I reckon I never will.
So, do I recommend Above and Beyond? Without a doubt! This is a fantastic first offering from Valent Games that deserves all the attention it can get. If you play Mutants and Masterminds and would like to explore a different style of play, you simply cannot go wrong with Above and Beyond!
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