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Character books – that is, products devoted to presenting character bios – have been a staple of superhero RPGs pretty much from the beginning. While other genres aren’t necessarily lacking in this type of sourcebook, they aren’t as common, as superheroes and villains tend to be a touch more difficult to create on the spot than, say, a barbarian, space smuggler or private eye. This likely stems from the tidy, almost poetic background stories, detailed superpowers and fine-tuned themes so common to the characters that star in the comicbooks.
Whatever the case may be, character books for superhero RPGs provide instant spandex-clad antagonists and protagonists that can be used by any GM. Not all character books are created equally though. Far from it. Some are fantastic, some are mediocre and others are simply uninspired.
Fortunately for Mutants and Masterminds fans, The Algernon Files falls into the first category. But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Let’s step back and look at things one at a time.
The Lowdown
The Algernon Files is a 128 page hardcover supplement from BlackWyrm Games. It utilizes the popular “M&M Superlink” program and boasts more than a hundred new characters as well as new feats, powers and other optional bits. The book itself was primarily written by Dave Mattingly and Aaron Sullivan with interior art by Derrick Thomas.
Content
As I mentioned previously, The Algernon Files is a book full of costumed heroes and villains. While there is an underlying setting to be found in these pages, the authors chose not to make it too intrusive so that Game Masters can easily insert and ignore whatever he or she chooses. The setting is easy enough to ignore, yet interesting enough that you may end up yearning to drop it into your campaign whole-cloth. The choice is yours… but either way you go, this product is going to have something to offer.
The book itself is sensibly broken up into three chapters (Introduction, Allies, and Enemies). Each chapter is further divided into numerous sub-chapters that focus on a particular team. Consideration is also given to characters who have chosen to go solo in sections entitled “Independents”. Plus, we are treated to three extremely potent, world-shaking villains gathered into a “Heavy Hitters” section. I probably would have simply included these bad-asses in the “Independents” sub-chapter, but I’m just picking nits really. There’s a definite emphasis on teams in the Algernon Files, which is obvious upon cracking the book open. This isn’t a bad thing really, but I’d have preferred more independent characters.
The book concludes with an appendix that contains new feats, a new power (Nausiate), a few new extras and revised rules for dealing with Knockback. All of these are well-done, if a bit unnecessary.
The meat of the book, though, is the characters themselves, so let’s leap heroically into discussing them, shall we?
Each team kicks off with a section that details the group’s history, modus operandi and other interesting tidbits. At this point, I have to admit something – I normally get bored reading team backgrounds. In fact, I often just skim them to catch the major gist of the team dynamics. I fully expected to do the same with ones presented in the Algernon Files. But then I figured I should force myself to be more thorough, since I was planning to review it. Boy, am I glad that I did! I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining they were. The authors completely avoided one of the pitfalls that many other authors fall prey to – making the teams “feel” generic. Each and every team had a reason to exist and boasted its own niche. For example, the members of the Aerie all possessed winged flight powers. While it may sound pretty minor (and it is), this immediately gives them something that distinguishes themselves from the other groups. A very nice touch.
The characters themselves are, for the most part, equally interesting as the teams they belong to, both in terms of background and game stats. Honestly, I found myself feeling a touch of envy with how the designers used the existing powers from M&M. It’s nice to see authors stretching the boundaries of what can be done with the system. It shows creativity, dedication and a willingness to try new things.
The character concepts are just as inventive. I’m not going to fib to you by saying that every character in the book is the coolest thing since polyhedral dice. A few of them struck me as a little bland overall, such as Sabbath, Stiltskin and Figment. Furthermore, some shticks are over-used in my opinion, like the overabundance of “speedster” characters. But, I’m more than willing to overlook such things considering how incredible most of the characters are. Nearly all of them are cool and some of them are jaw-droppingly so. Take a villain called The Assembly, for example. It’s a sentient pile of electronic doodads and appliances that constantly hungers to add more to its mass. If it fails to do so, its powers start to dwindle. In essence, The Assembly is a vampiric junkpile. And that’s just more cool than a bag-full of Arthur Fonzerellis.
Or how about Film Noir, a black-and-white detective from the ‘40s movies who has “peeled off” the screen and now exists in the real world? He narrates his life (in past-tense, no less), he’s literally two-dimensional and he defies reality while telling folks that he did it in a mundane every-day sort of way. For example (as given in the book), he might walk through a wall to gain entrance to a locked office and when asked, he’ll claim that he came in through the window.
To close this section up, you’ll also find stats, maps and pictures of the bases, vehicles and henchmen used by the characters. In short, everything you need is here.
Layout
The format for the character bios is an utterly important decision facing a company that plans to release a book. This importance is tripled for character books. A character book that using a confusing, hard to read format isn’t going to be terribly useful. The folks at BlackWyrm Games apparently realized this and put a lot of effort into doing it right.
At least one page is devoted to each character, with a handful of characters being allotted an extra page and a few minor characters being allotted less. The background/personality text is found in the middle of the page and is flanked on either side by a picture of the character and his or her game stats.
The format is easy to read and, more importantly, easy to reference during the game. Everything is laid out in a convenient manner. Any GM could obtain the info they need with but a quick glance at the relevant page(s).
My favorite aspect of the layout is a sidebar called “Public Knowledge” that is found with every character in the book. The designers’ intent was to help GMs determine what information can be learned about the characters with an applicable skill check (such as “Knowledge – Metahumans”). Also included are the various DCs for each nugget of knowledge. Not only does this make the GM’s life easier, it also has the added effect of allowing the reader to quickly surmise what a character is like without having to read the whole bio.
You can find sample character sheets from the book here: http://www.blackwyrm.com/Extras.htm
Artwork
Let’s start with the cover, which depicts The Fortress (the Sentinels’ HQ) with crosshairs over it. The colors chosen are striking, but the art itself is flat and motionless, not what I’d expect to see on a book about characters. Myself, I would have preferred to see characters on the cover, possibly in battle – something to convey action and adventure. The existing cover isn’t horrendous, but I didn’t care for it at all.
Luckily, the interior art was better. Much, much better! Looking through the book, I couldn’t find a single picture that made me cringe. Sure, some of the pieces are better than others, but all of them are good. The figures are rendered in grayscale, as the book was originally going to be in full color, if I recall correctly. You can check out the color art for the heroes here: http://www.blackwyrm.com/Extras/Algernon/Color_Allies.html. The villains haven’t been uploaded at the time of this review.
Final Analysis
If you’re looking for a gaggle of intriguing and inspired characters to add to your Mutants and Masterminds campaign, The Algernon Files delivers the goods. The characters found within the book are well-designed from top to bottom. Admittedly, I didn’t point-check each character, but I couldn’t find any glaring errors in the math.
If you’re after a fully developed campaign setting, you might walk away disappointed. There’s a setting there, lurking in the write-ups and bios, but the authors went lite on it. And why not? The Algernon Files was never meant to be a setting book. Its purpose was to give GMs a slew of new characters to dump into their existing games and it succeeds at its goal admirably. Scratch that – It succeeds marvelously!
For a meager $24.95, you get a lot of bang for your buck with The Algernon Files. I cannot recommend it enough!
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