Game: Darkness and Light
Publisher: Vigilance Press
Series: Vigilance: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 30th, June 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00
Darkness and Light in another PDF offering from the Vigilance Press super hero d20 line. Darkness and Light is presented in a similar style as Vigilance; size 12 font, solid use of red and blue in the text and two clear columns without anything in the way of stupid single word lines of text squeezed down the side of a table. I like the style, I know some people don’t but I suspect they’re blessed with large computer monitors and besides its easy enough to shrink the font size by clicking on the (minus) button in your copy of Acrobat but you can’t increase the font size without suffering horrible horizontal scrolling. Fine. Great. Super. We’ve established that I like the appearance of the Vigilance Press PDFs but before we move on to important matters such as the content of the download I’ll offer a further aside and note that Darkness and Light is more pretty than the core Vigilance rules. There is a better use of illustrations; each of the detailed NPCs has their own pictures. Vigilance Press is certainly one of the smaller d20 RPG companies out there and traditionally that means they should struggle for quality artwork but I don’t think anyone could question William Hammock’s front cover.
Darkness and Light is a mixed bag of bones. It serves two main functions; it offers up some inter-connected NPCs and a range of game mechanic additions to the main rules. The new game mechanics run the gambit, everything from new feats, origins, powers, character classes, prestige classes and disadvantages.
It’s a 46-page download, two of those pages are taken up by the required OGL legal foo and the NPCs stop at page 29. I’ve mixed feelings about the NPCs. I think a large part of the fun of any super hero game, for both the GM and the players, is to invent new heroes with fancy names, interesting gimmicks and weird costumes. In a sense the introduction of pre-generated NPCs takes away from some of this. On the other hand, and it this is a point of view which comes into play with every publication of pre-genned NPCs, it does save the GM some time and it is especially handy if the players do something the GM was not expecting (which must happen 80% of the time) and the GM needs to pull an interesting character out of the air. I think Darkness and Light manages to capitalise on this need for -interesting- pre-genned characters making sure that the listed NPCs have each other as contacts, allies and enemies. That’s surprisingly rare – even in those publications that are entirely devoted to NPCs. A common addition to the list of NPCs, but one which I think is slightly less important, is a quick burst of scenario hooks and plot ideas given to each of the NPCs. I think the scope of the NPCs is pretty good too. Comic aficionados will talk about the Golden Age of comics, the Dark Age and even Three Colour Comics. I think there is a fairly good balance of these basic genre concepts throughout the NPCs; there are some with time travelling spaceships and there are others with significantly less power, more angst and realism.
There are only two new origins; one which could clearly be labelled as missing from the main rules – the cybernetic enhanced character and one which shows a bit more lateral thinking – the normal background. The latter being designed for those contacts, thugs or, I guess, low powered vigilante or even Mystery Men style games.
The Vigilante just happens to be one of the new basic character classes. It’s included along with the Gangster. Each are detailed all the way up to level 20; the Vigilante reminiscent of the Fighter character class in that it picks up many bonus feats as it progresses and the Gangster growing in power until he rates as the Boss of Bosses (think King Pin, Spider fans).
You’ve noticed the two new origins and the two new character classes and so you’ll probably not be surprised to discover two new feats. There’s the cybernetic feat and that ties closely in with the new cyborg style origin and a designer chemistry feat (just so your Joker style villain can concoct his own horrible style deadly laughing gas).
The list of new powers breaks the mould and serves up more than two new additions, in fact there’s a total of five. As with the core Vigilance rules the super powers are nicely detailed and present a range of interesting uses for each ability.
There’s even more new disadvantages – and why not. The Achilles heel of any given super hero is often a crucial plot point in many games and comics. The disadvantages presented in Darkness and Light fall snugly into traditional super hero expectations and should fall just as snugly into your own d20 super heroic game.
I wasn’t a great fan of the prestige classes in the core Vigilance rules. I think it’s pretty hard to decide which levels of super powers are prestigious or not. I’m tempted to argue that all super heroes are of a prestige class. The prestige classes in Darkness and Light, however, walk a safer line than those in Vigilance since they’re mainly concerned with “Arch Enemies” and the like. It is easier to argue that the title of Arch Nemesis is on a higher level than A.N. Other super hero or master villain. All the prestige classes are detailed through 10 levels and that’s something that, to my shock, not all dedicated prestige class products bother to do.
If you have Vigilance then you’ll want to buy Darkness and Light. It doesn’t cost you more than a few bucks and so it’s safely value for money. If you don’t yet have Vigilance and you’re interested in super hero RPGs then Darkness and Light might just be what’s required to tip the balance. If the idea of super hero roleplay doesn’t appeal to you then I doubt you’ve even read this far into the review but Vigilance remains a PDF cheap introduction to the genre and one that provides a fairly gentle learning curve too.
