Game: Stand-Ins Printable Figures – Modern & Superheroes Set #1
Publisher: Interactive Design Adventures
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 15th, August 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 19
Average Score: 6.33
I think the Stand-Ins Printable Figures from Interactive Design Adventures are great value for money. The Modern & Superheroes Set #1 is no exception.
It was a clever move putting superheroes in with modern. If Interactive Design Adventures (let’s just call them IDA) hadn’t mixed the two together then we’d have had too many costumed heroes without plain clothes or too many plain clothes stand in figures for your average present day scenario. There’s a good mix instead. All of the “modern” paper figures could be used either as cannon fodder minions, civilians, law enforcement agencies or in disguise heroes.
There are some other nice crossovers too. There are six school girl figures (no, really) and as you’d expect (hope) they’re in the anime style. You could almost add another genre to the list that these Stand In figures cover. There are nearly two rows (that’s 18) cultists and I’ve ear marked them for a fantasy game. … Oh … and I’m just looking at the coloured Stand-Ins at this point too! As with the previous series, the Fantasy Set are there two PDFs. One has about 80 coloured figures and the other 260 black and white ones. I think the coloured ones are many times more impressive than the black and white.
It’s the black and white figures which gives the Stand-Ins their value for money. You’re looking at less than 4c per figure – that’s if you only print them out once (and if you slyly print them off at work where it’s free). I intend to cut’n’paste a collage of the gangster figures, repeating the set of four as many times as I can on an A4 page and then print that out. I’ll have an army of throw away gangsters! “Print an Encounter. Print an Army” is the catchy boiler plate that IDA use for the Stand-Ins themselves. You’ve the added advantage of being able to colour the black and white cut outs yourself and that’s useful in any super hero game where costume design can be important!
As with the fantasy set there are more than just humans (and heroes) here; there’s a Rottweiler (also handy for fantasy and horror), a giant ape and two larger standard size heroes.
There are no trademarked superheroes in here. You won’t find your favourite comic book character. You will find many heroes which have clearly been inspired by your favourite hero or villain though! That’s not a bad thing. It’s the best of both words; you’ve figures which are good enough to use in your franchise setting and figures which can be used in your homebrew setting.
I think US $12 is worth it for 350 cut out figures. I wont use nearly half of them but I’ll re-use enough of them often. Just watch that you have a beefy internet connection. The bundle of PDFs is nearly 25MB. Don’t try and dial this up five minutes before the players are due.
