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The Adventure
While watching television, the Player Characters catch a most surprising broadcast: Foxbat, a mostly harmless but very loony supervillain who’s convinced that he is living in a comic book, has somehow managed to gather enough signatures to run for president! ‘Don’t think of me as a Robin Hood figure!’ Foxbat says, ‘I’m not! But if the people have selected me, The Mighty Foxbat, to run for the highest office in the land, how can I possibly refuse? It’s a great calling, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I shall not shrink from this r-r-responsibility.’ That’s only a small excerpt out of Foxbat’s speech, but it is immediately clear that this man is both insane and serious about his candidacy.
It’s up to the PC’s to find out what – if anything – Foxbat is up to and, perhaps more importantly, if someone else is pulling the villain’s strings. The caped criminal seems to have far more followers than he should have and on top of that, his campaign promise to make sure people will have more fun in the future seems to be resounding in a big way amongst the American people…
The Low Down
Foxbat for President is an adventure for HERO System Fifth Edition, but can be easily adapted to suit other superhero RPG’s. This is partly because many of the NPC write-ups – including the one of Foxbat himself – are found in other Champions
books, saving space within the pages of this scenario. However, this also means that gamemasters who want to run Foxbat for President like it is meant to will not only need the core rulebook, but the Conquerors, Killers & Crooks and DEMON: Servants of Darkness supplements as well, which is a little unfortunate. Because of the many plot seeds, this adventure can also be used as a protracted campaign, but don’t expect any great illustrations to go along with it.
Review
Almost no-one this reviewer talks to seems to remember them, but he has very fond memories of the oddball Champions comics that used to be published by Heroic Publishing. The illustrations were pretty ‘classic’, but some of the stories were a lot more interesting than what we were used to. No, at that time, mainstream comic book publishers such as DC and Marvel wouldn’t have gotten away with stories about Nazi superheroines or openly lesbian heroes who scorned men and made out right in front of the reader. Many of the current HERO System
characters already populated the pages of these comics, including Mechanon and – of course – Foxbat, and so this journalist has always had a very definite idea of what this crazy supervillain is all about.
First off, I have met writer Michael Satran personally and this adventure is published by BlackWyrm, which has also published my own latest novel, Baour: Strands of Death, but I’m pretty sure this review will be unbiased. Michael and I met too briefly to become friends and on top of that he mostly talked about how great this adventure is, selling it a lot better than I was able to sell my novel to the journalists who visited us, mostly because Michael didn’t leave me enough time to talk. So, yes, the author has a tendency to leave little pause in his monologues, but as a writer, this may actually have been an advantage, as Foxbat for President is a breeze to read, just as it should be. This is pretty light-hearted stuff, but still serious enough to insert in campaigns that are just a little gloomier than most four-color campaigns are.
Even though the writing and editing falls short in some places, reading this adventure never becomes dull. In fact, it seems like Michael ran this scenario several times before putting in a final draft, as there’s a lot of helpful advise strewn throughout its 100 pages. In fact, the entire structure is very well thought-of, including no less than 26 A to Z plot seeds ready to insert within Foxbat’s campaign trail, a discussion of possible actions the PC’s might take, etc.
Obviously, there’s more going here than first meets the eye and Foxbat isn’t acting alone (even though he really thinks he is). This makes for a fairly involved adventure in which the tables are turned several times, with the PC’s probably ending up protecting Foxbat. It should be noted, however, that most of the text is written with genuine heroic characters in mind, which means a lot of it would have to be adjusted if the players have created darker personas for themselves.
Despite the fact that Michael has found a good albeit delicate balance between light-heartedness and suspension of disbelief, there are a few flaws as well. Mostly it’s subplots. Some of them don’t have enough of a background or rationale to support their existence (like the attack of the dead presidents), while others seem to be bound for nowhere, but good game master’s shouldn’t have too much trouble expending on those. Also, apart from the mediocre drawings illustrating the NPC’s presented here, many of the more important NPC’s and organisations can only be found in supplements published by Hero Publishing, which is a shame. The only other thing that I would have liked: Foxbat talking to himself like he was in a comic book, as represented in the original comics. Ah, well, you can’t have everything, right?
Conclusion
Foxbat for President is a fun adventure that is perfect for players who don’t mind handling scenarios that are maybe a little harder to ‘believe’ in than the standard fair. Because of the fact that the writer has taken great pains to give hints on how to include this scenario in a larger campaign, game masters who like to have a foundation on which to build a long series of sessions have a great tool available as well, even though they’ll have to invest in a few supplements in order to be able to play this as intended. It should be noted, however, that both supplements are great books and that many HERO System gamers will probably own a copy already anyway.
More info: www.herogames.com