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Yes, I know I promised my multitude of fans that I would do Death Duel With the Destroyers next. I also know the massive amount of cash RPGnet is paying me for these reviews should have motivated me to do so. However, my peepers (er...that’s eyes!) just kept getting drawn to Battle Above the Earth, and, well...
I chose to review BAtE for a number of reasons. First, because I like it, and it’s a pretty good V&V adventure. Another reason, is because it’s one of the earliest adventures I went through as a V&V player, and it still holds fond memories of me and my favorite gaming group. One last reason is that it takes place in my state, good old Wisconsin!
BAtE also goes to show that you can have a good supers adventure that doesn’t just involve stomping super baddies. This adventure involves 2 rescue missions and mysteries (sort of) to be solved. It is pretty straightforward, and provides enough juicy stuff to run right from the book. There are also a couple fun tangents the PCs might go off on, and a quick GM can have a lot of fun with those!
Appearance:
Here we go again :). The book is a whopping 18 pages long. It has a small font, and double spaced black and white interior. The interior illustrations are by Jeff Dee, and are the cool Dee artwork you would expect. The cover is color, and I like it. It is a mixed media work, and has a lot of character. I can’t tell you who it’s by, because the cover, counters, and maps are by “Bain Sidhe Studio” and lists 5 artists (one of who is Bill Willingham, although I know it isn’t his work). Rather odd, unless they ALL worked on everything together. The center of the book finds the 2 pages of cut out cardboard counter/miniatures you find in most V&V products. While a couple are by Jeff Dee, the majority aren’t and they are pretty sad looking in comparison to the counters Dee makes, oh well.
For the most part the maps are fine, except for the map of space station one. The map is very confusing (as it is a rotating wheel design) and missing some things in the key. It will take you a few minutes of looking at this to figure it out. If you haven’t got it yet, this might help...The “X”s indicate access ladders between the first and second floor. The little rooms with the “E”s are the Emergency Airlocks, as it states in the key, but the 2 big rooms with the “E”s are actually the East Spoke tunnel (The “W”s are the west spoke tunnels). The longer 2 maps are the bottom floors, while the shorter are the top floor directly above them, and the number keys correspond to both floors of a given section, and not the entire floor (there are 2 sections on each of the floors). Hope that saves you some time, I had to look at this thing for about 15 minutes before I could figure out what the hell it all meant (or maybe I’m just a bit slow?)!
The Story:
This section contains complete spoilers, so don’t read it if you plan to play!!
The basic of the story is this: A warlike race of lizardlike aliens, called the Logrellians, who have depleted, not only their planets resources, but also, any opponents to fight have been expanding into the universe. They have discovered Earth . Sending scouts ahead, they will come if the scouts send a signal that lasts 4 hours (they don’t really tell you why it has to last so long, but it’s assumed it’s to give the PCs long enough to shut it down). If they come, they will bring a microwave beam generator, that will kill 90% of the earths population (:)). The other 10% will be used for slave labor. Both the signal, and the microwave beam generator must originate from Space Station One, built by NASA in 1984 (well, according to the adventure anyway!) to be effective.
The adventure takes place in two parts. The first being on Earth, and the second taking our heroes to the space station.
In the first part, our heroes are contacted by The National Inquisitor, a sleazy Tabloid. They are offered a hefty reward (donated to their favorite charity, of course) if they will travel to Big Rock Wisconsin (yeeeeeHaw!) to find one of their reporters who has disappeared. The reporter was following up leads on the hottest thing to hit the press...the Lizardman, a local legend that has been spotted several times in Big Rock. After reporting that he was on to “the story of the year”, he disappeared. This leads the PCs to Big Rock where they hob nob with the locals, hear all the local superstitions and folklore, and have a good ol time exploring the surrounding area. Eventually they will discover the missing reporter and rescue him. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got taken prisoner by the Logrellion scout ship. After a fight, the remaining aliens (they have self disintegration devices if knocked out in battle!) take off, and our heroes go home victorious (or so they think).
Of course, the aliens have decided that Earth is premo realestate and are off to the Space Station to transmit their signal to the waiting invasion force, but the heroes don’t know this yet.
Now, I know what your thinking, “that doesn’t sound like super heroes!?”. Your right, and it’s one of the charms of this adventure. It’s got a little horror, a little science fiction, a little humor, and a little mystery all rolled into a nifty little package. An odd little afternote at the end of the first part is that the GM might want to consider including an actual Lizardman. They even give him stats. Hmmmm, gets the devious GM thinking.
This takes us to the second part of the adventure (which may seem totally unrelated to the PCs, who really didn’t learn anything in the first part of the adventure).
The Logrellions have hired a group of super bad guys to take the space station for them (a bit earlier). They have succeeded, and are even now sending the invasion signal. The PCs are contacted by CHESS (or any organization they are friendly with), and briefed on the situation (well, the situation of the space station being captured by super baddies, that’s all they know). They are asked to sneak on the space station and rescue the crew, and put down the bad guys.
This part of the adventure will find the heroes dukeing it out with the aliens and super dudes aboard the space station. The super villains are pretty boastful, and will blab the plot out for the PCs, and with skill and luck they should be able to shut off the signal, saving the Earth (of course, they give a cute little side note about further adventures, should they fail :)).
The 5 villains they give are actually pretty neat. They have some cool combinations of powers, interesting backgrounds, and of course the Dee illustrations are some of the best. The only problem is I don’t really know why they were included? On the space station, they wander around independent of each other and the Logrellians. I think the adventure would be better served by including some super powered Logrellian champions, or one (can you say Super Skrull?) Super-duper Logrellian. The only motivation the Super baddies have is their greed, and a promise of ruling the last 10% of Earths population. I think they were just thrown in as an afterthought to include some conventional super villains.
grubmans conclusion:
I like BAtE! It is a nice compact 1 or 2 night adventure. With a fun group and GM the first part of the adventure can be extremely fun. The second part is a little more straightforward, but a satisfactory ending, once the PCs figure out what is going on. Although a mere 18 pages, I think BAtE is pretty well developed, and provides most of the the information you will want. The writing style is good, so it’s a decent read also. Lots of goodies, with no space wasted on fluff you won’t use. I put this one in my (mythical) top 10 V&V products (of course there are only 28 or 29, so those are pretty good odds :))
