Gadgets And Gear

Once upon a time, many moons ago, there was a little 32-page supplement for Champions called ‘Gadgets!’. It was good enough for the time, being intended for 3rd edition I believe, but now a new version has been released for Hero 5th Edition, specifically for its Champions line.

The Layout

Gadgets And Gear is a 152-page softcover (the Hero Games website has it listed at 160 pages, but that is a mistake), with a black & white interior, filled with crime-busting goodies. Hero is a universal system, but this is a product made specifically for Champions and superhero play: you won’t find Fantasy Hero goodies enclosed within. Most items inside could work in a Star Hero campaign, I imagine, though I’m unsure how well The Spacer’s Toolkit, a Star Hero book, already covers this niche, as I don’t own it.

The format follows that of the previous Hero products, in particular the UNTIL Superpowers Database, with the usual generous sidebars. Unlike the Superpowers book, however, the sidebars aren’t put to work. Perhaps I was spoiled by that book, but it would have been nice to see the sidebars used for more flavour-text purposes, containing things like the notes of an inventor building his latest creation, or notable uses of particular gadgets in the Champions Universe by the already-established characters in it.

Overall, things are cleanly presented: I had no trouble navigating the entries. Book art is entirely unimportant to me unless it’s depicting a specific person, place, or thing, but I’d guess most people would find it average. The art used to introduce each chapter is quite nice though (where can I buy a Grond action figure?). It’s also used on occasion to illustrate certain entries in the book, but does so in an odd way: you’ll find a picture describing, for example, an arsenal of Halloween-related items. The picture is on page 138, but the item entry is on page 53. This is very clearly labeled under the picture, but some might find it a bit odd that the picture wasn’t with the item itself (though it does serve to make you notice neat things and flip through all over the book).

Main Contents

The book starts off with a very helpful guide to what it intends to do, which, as it nicely tells you most of what you need to know about the book, I’ll summarize here. It’s not a book of new rules (more on this below), and it disavows any attempt to make the item builds within the standard or official way of doing things. It’s also not a collection of vehicles (already covered in a pair of nice Hero books), mystical items, robots, bases, doomsday devices, or mundane items. Most of these things require their own book, but I feel this one would have benefited by a chapter giving a treatment of modern weapons more thorough than that found in the main rules, without having its overall theme ruined.

As with all Hero supplements, this book is more a showcase displaying the usage of the Hero System rather than a collection of new rules. There are a pair of new rules concerning Charges use in a multipower and weapons that require a crew to use, but overall, you’re seeing the rules you already know being put to work.

Gadgets And Gear is broken into 6 chapters, each dealing with a particular type of equipment. Featured are Super-Weapons, and then Defensive, Movement, Sensory and Communication, Costume, and Miscellaneous Gadgets.

Like the Superpowers Database, each item in the book is not just one item, but a whole host of items. Take, for instance, the Pulson Rifle, a simple weapon that just deals raw damage, without any flashy effects. Included in its write-up are the base stats for the item (what it actually is in Hero power terms, its target/area of effect, its range, its duration, etc). Underneath a brief flavour text description of the item are 10 different variations on it, ranging from a stronger and weaker version of it (simple modifiers to the number of dice involved), to versions with sophisticated targeting, wide-beam effects, sniper ranges, and a jury-rigged design with a tendency to misfire. There are 10 variations on this basic rifle alone. All items follow this format, though a more typical item has about six variations, and for most items two of those are simply the stronger and weaker versions. One might complain about the inclusion of these two variations in most entries: what constitutes strong or weak is different for each campaign, and in any case these are variations most Hero players can do in their head in seconds. However, I imagine if they weren’t present, people would then complain about the absence of such an “obvious” set of variations: sometimes you can’t win.

The weapons section gives you such things as mega-cannons, de-evolutionizer rays, buzzsaw gauntlets, fear gas, electric lariats, hypnotic musical instruments, dropped marbles, hurled lightning, candy-shaped weapons (I’m partial to the cookie shuriken myself) and combat yo-yos, each with its own variations: plenty to choose from.

The defensive chapter is primarily focused on armour and its variants. There’s an optional system for limiting the amount of Active Points you can cram into a portion of the armour, so that you don’t see too many ankle-mounted ICBM’s. Each armour component (boots, helmet, gauntlet etc) has its own random table that allows you to quickly select up a simple 60-75-point item. There aren’t as many neat surprises as in the weapons section, but at 30 pages it’s rather hefty.

The Movement chapter is pretty standard (the section listing for it in the table of contents has no page number reference, but that’s unimportant), as is the Sensors section, but the Costume section is a lot of fun as well, with items such as the Distracting Costume (+20 PRE, only for seductive purposes – when T&A attacks!), a Porcupine Costume, and at last, the definitive utility belt, a 33-item monstrosity loaded with a ton of cool toys. The Misc section is short, with oddities such as a powerful Cosmic Gem and a Robot Servant.

The book wraps up with the standard Hero index, referencing each item.

What do I think it’s missing? Not much: a sample gadgeteer or two at the back illustrating creative uses of the gadget pool along with the new items would have been nice, but hardly essential. I think that in a system with base attack powers as generic as in Hero that mundane weapons don’t deserve their own book. However, what could be done with them that hasn’t already been done in other Hero books would fit in here better than anywhere else.

The Wrapup

In the end, I was very pleased with this book, as it serves well both as an idea generator and as a time-saver. The creativity behind the items present makes this book a welcome relief from the usual books just full of dull guns, guns, and more guns, even if I do wish some of that was present. Even when a base item is rather unspectacular, you can usually find an interesting variation on it.

I give this book a 4 for layout, though I ask you to bear in mind the fact that I don’t care about interior fluff art. For content, I give a 4: a few minor flaws aside, this is a solid book that any Champions player could use. It certainly beats the hell out of the original Gadgets book.

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