Written by Darren Watts, Derek Hiemforth, Jason Walters, & Steven S. Long. A 160-pg trade paperback, perfect bound with black and white interior. This is a comp copy and was not playtested.
Vibora Bay is one of three fictional modern cities in the Hero System line up, Millennium City & Hudson City being the other two and it falls squarely between the tenor of those two cities. This book is a stand alone product that may be incorporated as desired into many modern campaigns – even those that do not cater to super-powered beings, but the closer your game is to real life the harder the task becomes. The book is both a GM & Player guide with a small section at the end, called the GMs vault, which details many of the secret plots.
Overview: Vibora Bay is a hefty read with a subtle theme that run throughout the book. The nature of the book moves it away from “section breaking” features such as charts or stat blocks artificially raising a rare “dry spot” but the read was still engaging. Overall, the tone of the book is very appealing – Vibora Bay is a cross between a modern city, like Huston and a mystical one, like New Orleans. The setting caters well to mystics, normals, vigilantes, low-powered super-agents, and low to medium powered superheroes who like a little dark side to their daring dos. A high point to the product is that Vibora Bay is a complete package featuring everything one might need to use it in a game. However, the most appealing factor to the book is that you can run several genres side by side.
Layout & Design: The cover illustration of the shapely Black Mask against the Vibora Bay skyline was done by Erich Von Hase. The interior art occasionally crosses into a detracting cartoon sketch but in general is passable.
Chapter by Chapter
History of Vibora Bay – There is a good bit of early American colonization history leading up to modern times. With all the recent news about hurricanes and Florida it was interesting to see this very issue addressed in the cities back story.
Lay of the Land – This chapter is a hodge-podge of sections designed to give GMs the tools necessary to run a coastal city in Florida. The first details weather, critters, & swamplife.
The section on the city struck me right off as feeling comfortable. The names all make sense, the layout of the city is logical, and it is broken down into 24 manageable wards. The same holds true for the city government. No small feat when designing a fictional city to mesh with the real world.
Life in Vibora Bay This section covers all the little facts needed to make a city come to life; newspapers, radio stations, colleges, and nightlife. The superhuman section covers two prominent citizens, Black Mask X and Dr Ka. Black Mask is a Punisher caliber vigilante who is not so angsty. She makes an excellent point of entry into Vibora Bay for players. Dr Ka also serves as an aid de camp to players within Vibora Bay since his powers make him an astounding source of information. These two set the pace for the rest of the book characters – powerful and competent but not so competent that they might not need some aid.
The section on the business world is where neatly done, providing players with clues but not spelling out any wrong doers nor whom they might be connected with. The Martial World introduces a new style of Martial Arts, Vibora Carmesi (crimson viper) indigenous to the area and a superheroic practitioner of the style called Redsnake.
I would be remiss to skip over the substantial section on the High Apostolic Church. A mix of Catholicism and Voodoo, the church naturally blends with and adds to the color of the city. The church also provides a font of semi-mystical characters.
Cops & Robbers – Covering the police, sheriff, UNTIL, & Primus this section provides an interesting mix of personalities – any one of whom can become an ally or a enemy depending on the actions within your game.
Superhuman Allies has a mix of characters: Amphibian – A bitter superhero and would be eco-terrorist that despises violence.
Brother Thunder & Sister Rain – two mystic practitioners of voodoo who work closely with the disenfranchised within Vibora Bay. A colorful pair.
Juryrig – A technological genius who is too stupid to realize what tangling with VIPER really means.
The Underworld covers the two mundane criminal orginazations – one a descendant of the mafia and the other a modern street gang. The leaders are both convincing and all too reminiscent of real world crime figures but looks can be deceiving. This section finishes with sketchy notes on VIPER, DEMON, & ARGENT.
Hot Spots for Cool Heroes – Posh dining, big buildings, and occult book stores fill this section. A detailed discussion of eight interesting locations within Vibora Bay. This is another one of the sections that provides the small touches for your game.
Gamemastering Vibora Bay – This fifty page chapter forms the core of the book. Not one to hold off, the GMs chapter introduces one of the prime movers of Vibora Bay – Therakiel, the halfway angel. A being of demented divinity that plans on besting heaven and hell. This is followed by discussions of running Vibora in different genres before segueing into the vault.
The vault is a section that tells you about the lies you just read – Vibora Bay is intended for players. The vault extends on the information already provided FREX one of the companies is a front for VIPER, in the players section there might be a hint of that but here you get the good dirt, write ups on who is running the nest (a totally normal psychopath), what the goals are, how they use the company, and other odds and ends needed by the GM.
This section also houses many of the villains – discussed or not in the previous section. You will find a write up of the Mafioso Guy Sweetland, the previously mentioned VIPER Commander, a group of psychotic misfits called the Cirque Sinister, and others to round out the VB stable.
Summation
Vibora Bay is a good buy and an entertaining read. It provides enough of the fine touches to allow a GM to run with it but not enough to bog you down in detail. There is enough of a backstory in the characters presented that the GM has a trove of plots ready to hatch.
The Negative – Some of the art seemed out of place, more like a Sunday morning comic strip than RPG art. It is not bad – in that it is a popular style but for me it did not work. If this book was one of the “Animated” line it might have passed muster but the book is not an animated title.
The Neutral - Vibora is the tweener town. It can cater to both supers and heroic level games but has plot elements that might be out of place in either.
The Good – This is a super sized combo meal. It has your locations, villains, plot ideas, and information that is useful to everyone at the table with a large side dish of GM only information. The writing is generally good but more importantly the city comes off with a definitive “feel” to it. I had notions of running a low-powered Dark Champions game while reading the book and using VB instead of Hudson City – that is one heck of a compliment. Eosin the Red Randy Madden
