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Of all the game supplements that Steve Long has written, his most controversial book is still probably his first.
In 1993, Hero Games published Long’s first book, Dark Champions: Heroes of Vengeance, which soon became a classic for its wealth of information on criminal organizations, forensic data, and other details of “street-level” crimefighting. Also, the book contained three sample vigilante characters: The armored superhero Copperhead, the street vigilante The Scarecrow- and Steve’s own player character, The Harbinger of Justice.
Harbinger was presented as a very experienced killer vigilante and “force of nature” in comparison to standard Dark Champions characters or even standard superheroes; while he wasn’t superhumanly strong or tough, he had Intelligence and a Skill list worthy of Batman, an effective Dexterity/initiative rating of 40 (in a game where ‘normal’ Characteristics max at 20 and a speedster/Flash clone would have around 30 to 35) and enough Combat Skill Levels to waste either Batman or Flash in a firefight without getting tagged himself. To top it off, Harbinger had a Power Pool arsenal based on him being able to summon weapons to his hand via an elaborate teleportation technology, ensuring that he could come up with any firearm desired whenever he wanted.
In short, freakin’ ridiculous, especially for a genre that intends to be “realistic.” But Harbinger was what would now be called an “iconic character” for the Dark Champions line, so when Hero Games began its 5th Edition line of products, the status of Harbinger became a point of debate for fans on discussion boards, with the number of Harbinger haters probably equaling those who were curious to see what he’d look like in the new system.
The new Dark Champions came out last year, expanding on the options for character creation and equipment use, but skimping on some of the character descriptions from the original. Most of these- including Harbinger- are featured in the first sourcebook for the 5th Edition Dark Champions line, Hudson City: The Urban Abyss.
In fact, Hudson City serves much the same purpose as the first sourcebook of the original Dark Champions line, Long’s Justice, Not Law (1993), going back to the fictional setting of Hudson City and establishing it in even greater detail, including Harbinger, his main adversaries in the Card Shark crime ring and real-world operators like the Mafia, along with various bits of “local color” to make it useful as the center of a campaign.
THE BOOK
Like most of Hero Games’ major supplements, Hudson City is a softcover costing $26.99, this book running 278 pages. The maps used to detail the city are very useful and repeated in appropriate spaces. The artwork is fairly sparse, most of it average but better than what’s in the main Dark Champions book. (However, the picture on p. 142 is just priceless.)
The early section of the book mentions in passing that while Hudson City is nominally part of the “Champions Universe,” there isn’t going to be any product crossover between Dark Champions/Hudson City material and the four-color world of Champions. (Which makes sense to me: The official DC Universe includes both Superman and John Constantine.)
Chapter One goes through a brief history of Hudson City, beginning with the fact that it’s located in New Jersey. This probably does not require further comment.
Chapter Two, “The Lay of the Land,” goes over the vital statistics of the city in some detail, average rent for each general income level, major landmarks, utilities and transportation options. Hudson City, like some other cities in the US, has an effective public transportation system, and also took the innovative step of making the subway and EL (elevated) lines interchangeable. This section includes a very well-done master map of the city (on page 17), which is the basis for more detailed inset maps of the separate neighborhoods.
The bulk of this chapter goes over each neighborhood or business block one by one, usually including the detail map, descriptions of the local history and neighborhood landmarks or popular spots. The sidebars provide GM’s aid by giving images and impressions of each area (Images of Bankhurst: “Sunshine glittering off of glass and steel skyscrapers”; Images of Elmview: “The early morning sun shining over a guy passed out in the gutter after a few too many the night before”).
Overall, these portraits of the neighborhoods depict a city with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. For an “Urban Abyss,” Hudson City isn’t quite so depressed and hopeless as Hub City, Bludhaven, or Gary, Indiana. There are various businesses springing up, there is a well-established middle class, and overall living conditions seem to be on an upswing. However, there are still several depressed neighborhoods- mostly black- and in one of them, there’s a so-called “Boxtown” composed of homeless residents living under the cover of the expressways. Moreover, there is an ugly undercurrent of racism (on all sides), sexism and homophobia in the city’s culture, and Long isn’t politically correct in pointing these things out through the first-person quotes of various local residents. Hero Games isn’t exactly White Wolf, but the book does include a few NYPD Blue-level words like “asshole” and even “fag.”
The chapter goes on to describe the political situation in Hudson City, with the main point of tension being the fact that the Republican mayor is very anti-union, with many voters sympathizing with his crusade against union corruption, but many other people are either in unions or know someone who is in one (with Hudson City, like several other major cities on the East Coast, still being heavily unionized). The chapter concludes with an overview of various local and federal government offices, and some of the people who fill them, with at least one ex-Councilman listed as being popular with “the Italian community and local labor unions.”
Chapter Three, “A Day In The Life,” deals with miscellany used to convey the local culture, like Hudson City’s radio stations, hospitals and sports teams. The various local subcultures (The Academic World, The Social World, etc.) are also reviewed.
Chapter Four, “The Long Arm of the Law,” focuses on public agencies, specifically the Hudson City Police Department (HCPD). This includes local crime statistics, precinct boundaries, and such. While the HCPD has a reputation for corruption, it did get cleaned up somewhat in the ‘90s, but not totally. For instance, some precincts allow officers to collect bribes from criminals to leave them alone; this take is then distributed as a “pad” with shares divvied according to seniority. This chapter also briefly deals with Federal law enforcement, the court/correctional system, and the Hudson City Fire Department. Finally, it gives a brief discussion of the local vigilantes, strictly in general terms known to the authorities (since the crimefighters obviously haven’t been caught yet).
Chapter Five, “Predators,” goes over the type of threats that a vigilante or police squad would be expected to deal with in this setting. Foremost among these are the organized crime families. The information on the Mafia, tongs, etc. parallels the 4th Edition Dark Champions, but recasts the specifics in terms of the groups who are controlling various parts of Hudson City (the Mafia dominates “Little Italy,” the Latino neighborhood is fought over by the Mexican Mafia and the ‘Latin Kings,’ etc.).
This section also brings up Card Shark and a few other “costumed criminals,” not all of whom are actually detailed in this book. The chapter concludes with a brief look at “Other Crime” that is not run by other groups, including the main players in the vice world.
Chapter Six, “Hot Spots for Cool Heroes,” provides greater detail on a few areas that might be of specific interest to PCs. Among other things, this section includes a description of the Hudson City Fish Market that reads a bit like a Tourism Department brochure, at least compared to how it’s described in the “GM’s Vault” toward the back of the book. In fact, most of the areas described in the first parts of the book have dirty secrets that are revealed in the GM’s Vault. Most useful would be the section on the “Quickcorner” convenience marts, especially if you’re planning to run Clerks: The Roleplaying Game.
Chapter Seven, “Gamemastering Hudson City,” includes the all-important GM’s Vault, where the author goes over each of the previous pages and reveals little tidbits that the player characters wouldn’t know. Some of these are fairly important. There are also writeups for a couple of the characters in Chapter Five.
Then you have the NPC section of the book, leading off with: The Harbinger of Justice. Given that “official” Dark Champions rules enforce a Normal Characteristic Maxima of 20, Harbinger isn’t quite as fast as he used to be- he’s only got Dexterity of 23. He does however, have every Autofire Skill in the game, enough Penalty Skill Levels to cancel out modifiers for a head shot, and enough “Deadly Blow” Talent to double the damage of a 44. Automag. So while Harbinger may no longer be able to play tag with The Flash, he can still take down an Apache helicopter with a handgun. Particularly amusing is the GM’s advice note stating that you “shouldn’t need to make Harbinger any tougher; he’s already pushing the upper end of how most campaigns define ‘Dark Champions’ characters.” In fact, Harbinger bought the ticket, got on the plane, and is flying above the upper end of Dark Champions limits, looking down. “Hey, I can see your house from here! AND shoot the mailbox!”
This section also contains 5th Edition writeups for the vigilantes Renegade and The Scarecrow, which are considerably briefer than the Harbinger writeup, as they’re designed to be within a player character’s range of experience. After these three examples of “good” guys, the book goes over the Card Shark criminal organization, which is something between a “costumed crime” organization like Champions’ VIPER, and a more realistic crime ring, albeit one focusing on gambling, with a playing-deck motif. Most of the Card Shark characters were also in the original Dark Champions, and their 5th Edition rewrites are in keeping with the premise of the new DC line as being more about high-level action heroes than low-level superheroes. For instance, Deadman’s Hand gets his “death touch” from high-tech gloves, not a mutant power.
The Card Shark profile is followed by several solo villains, one of whom bears an eerie resemblance to an asylum inmate in one of the older DC supplements, and most of whom are within the power level of beginning PCs, at least in straight-up combat.
The usually exhaustive Index for a Hero Games book is here supplemented by a PDF called The Hudson City Encyclopedia, which you have to download from the free section of the company website. However, the book does include a street index that works very well with that master map grid on page 17.
SUMMARY
Again, Hudson City: The Urban Abyss goes over some of the same material as Justice, Not Law (and the original version of Dark Champions) but is better organized and is of course suitable for HERO System 5th Edition. Moreover, as the first sourcebook for the new Dark Champions line, it is specifically designed to serve as a setting for all types of action-hero adventure, especially for police and vigilante campaigns. Those who liked the original version of Dark Champions will be even more impressed by this new book, and those who are new to the rules system or the Hudson City setting will find this a very useful resource.
Style: 3 As with most Hero System books, this one has merely functional art and layout, but the use of flavor text and “Images of” sidebars helps to bring readers into the setting.
Substance: 5 Also, as with most Hero books (especially those written by Steve Long) the level of detail given for the setting is going to be very useful for GMs.
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