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After 2005's superb Pulp HERO, Hero Games has finally come up with the product line's first supplement, titled (with perhaps a tinge of Green Ronin envy) Masterminds & Madmen. This is also the first book by new author Rob Hudson, and it is remarkably good, serving very well as an "Enemies" sourcebook for GMs.
THE BOOK
Like most Hero books these days, M&M is a softcover of less than 200 pages but over $25 (specifically $29.99). Bravely continuing to insist that their $1.93 graphics budget is a feature and not a bug, DOJ/Hero uses the same generic format of recent books, with some interior illustrations put over a black stripe-white stripe-black stripe cover. Fortunately these illos, and most of the interior art, are done by the Brothers Fraim, the excellent if slightly cartoony team best known for their work for KenzerCo and HackMaster. This, and the return of veteran Hero artist Greg Smith, may indicate a certain return to form after a few recent Champions books where the ostensible "superheroes" looked like they should've been in the original Clanbook: Tzimisce. There are some ugly pieces but most of these are for characters like The Frankenstein Mob, who are *supposed* to be grotesque. So, points for that.
Chapter One: Masterminds
As with the Champions book Conquerors, Killers & Crooks, M&M starts with examples of the potential "world class" villains whose plots could shape the entire campaign. The first two of these are genuine world threats: Dr. Fang and the Skymaster. Since Steve Long deliberately did not create a Fiendish Chinese Mastermind for Pulp HERO, Hudson gives us Doctor Fang, a brilliant scientific mastermind who covers all the bases. Fang started his criminal career around the turn of the 20th Century, concurrent with the Fu Manchu stories. He developed a longevity formula that has the side effect of giving the user lavender eyes. This means that the actor who plays him in the contemporary movies would probably be some Scandinavian guy. Also, Fang has two daughters, one of whom is a classic Dragon Lady/femme fatale, the other of whom is an honorable martial artist who could beat up anybody short of Bruce Lee. And it so happens that the two girls are identical twins, which can create all manner of mistaken identity/love triangle/love square issues for characters.
(Gee, it's a good thing my players don't read RPG.net...)
The Skymaster is meant to fill the "Warlord of the Air" role, combining SciFi with the "Air Adventure" Pulp subgenre. If Skymaster is not in fact the best pilot in the world, he's bound to be better than even the PC who's built to be the group's aerial ace. He and his main lieutenant (a honorable German Knight-of-the-Air type) are going to be very formidable in a fight in any environment, they're specialized for dogfights, and the only problem with the Skymaster's organization is that you can only use it with the Air Adventure game; after all what's the point of challenging the Skymaster's rulership of the air if none of the PC's even have piloting familiarity? This section is still great, though, if only because it presents stats for the Skyfortress Cumulus, the 500-meter long, frackin' ENORMOUS dirigible that Skymaster uses as his mobile launch platform and main headquarters.
The remaining characters in this section are much lower in scale and threat, but still fascinating, such as the Crimson Wraithe, whose origin gives him a rather unique Weird Science power and Achilles' Heel, and the Geistkapitan, a former German sub commander turned pirate who dresses himself and his crew up like drowned corpses in order to make it seem that they really are vengeful ghosts from the deep. ('And I would've gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling...')
Chapter Two: Fiendish Organizations
The second chapter deals with groups that are defined more in terms of the group identity than the mastermind leader, even though most of the ones described have some sort of leadership.
First you have the Cabal, which is what the name describes, a cabal of businessmen and industrialists who combine their influence to enrich themselves at the expense of their enemies. None of these people, including their "enforcers", have any real powers at all. They present a chance for the GM to use non-combat threats against the characters, and for the PCs to develop their investigation and infiltration skills. This also means that characters who are not combat monsters can be very useful in Cabal scenarios.
Then you have the Coletti Mob, who were previously described in Pulp HERO as a competitive Mafia family in New York City. (Many of the villains in the book are written up for the Hero Universe's Hudson City.) They are specifically described as a straightforward threat, but one that's small enough that the PCs may be able to eliminate with luck and hard work.
Then there is the Cult of Nine Degrees, a Satanic mystery cult that in many respects isn't that much different from the Cabal- except that they can occasionally summon demons.
Finally, there is the Frankenstein Mob, the closest thing that the book has to a "supervillain team," comprised of various freaks who use their weird powers and fearsome appearances to serve as mercenaries, ones who prefer to scare their targets into compliance. This is a neat section because the five villains all have very distinctive appearances, personalities and character hooks.
The chapter presents all manner of options for intrigue and investigation, since for one thing one of the Cabal is also secretly a "Prince" in the Cult of the Nine Degrees. In fact the chapter ends with a rather involved crossover scenario detailing how various people in this chapter and the following section could get tangled up in a plot that involves the heroes in a fight on several fronts.
Chapter Three: Solo Villains
This chapter of course deals with the sundry villains who are not members of the above groups. The interesting thing is that while many of them are pure combat monsters, some are essentially normal guys who just happen to be in adversarial situations with the PCs, like the shifty art merchant or the real estate grifter who's swindled a character's loved one.
Also, many of these characters flesh out previous material, and include the Hunters of Randall's Raiders (from the main PH game) and also refer to some of the characters from the Hero Plus PDFs or even to each other (the Jungle Queen is Hunting/Hunted by the Great White Hunter in the same book).
Plus, one of those links to the Pulp HERO book is a young Mexican science student who was experimented on by the evil Doctor Jennings Petrie, turning him into the vengeful brain-in-a-robot known as: El Diablo Robotico.
This ALONE is worth recommending M&M.
Style: 3
Again, Masterminds & Madmen is a return to form for Hero Games products, in that like most of DOJ's initial material, and the Pulp HERO book itself, the art and layout actually balance out as "average" and are sometimes even "above average."
Substance: 4
I highly recommend Masterminds & Madmen for its well-detailed villains, as well as the way the author presents hints for putting them into stories and even using them in combination.
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