Mighty Protectors Review

It's probably a record for longest time between editions of a game (35 years), but VnV 3e, aka “Mighty Protectors” is here. Co-creators Jeff Dee and Jack Herman never gave up on the baby they created in high school, and neither have their fans. There are still active players of VnV today, especially as the old breed has been teaching it to their kids. Let's face it: VnV is fun.

The PDF became available on RPGNow on Sept 1, 2017, and Jeff is always responsive to constructive and coherent feedback.

Why “Mighty Protectors”?

VnV 3e is being re-branded as “Mighty Protectors,” and it makes sense.  It has been a long time, and a veritable pile of SHRPGs have come out. A fresh name always goes well with a fresh start.

The new edition has a default campaign setting of the Mighty Protectors Universe. You get rules for making heroes, and you get a fully developed cast of NPC supporting agencies to help heroes, the criminal empires global and local, and a universe full of aliens to ignore or explore.  That's pretty cool.

The rebranding also has a practical side: Scott Bizar, of Fantasy Games Unlimited, for reasons I don't know, and won't speculate on, kept the game’s publishing rights locked up for 30 years until a court order made him stop. He can no longer stop Jeff and Jack from publishing (and modifying) the copyrighted material, but he does still own the “Villains and Vigilantes” trademark. So, a new name - “Mighty Protectors!” - is a great and classic way to dump old baggage.

Yeah, But Is It V&V?

Absolutely, mostly. MP is VnV the way DnD 5e is DnD - you have the same random character generation, or modelling after yourself, and the same list of powers, and everything feels pretty much the same way it always did.  The “look and feel and flavor” remain the same, but the mechanisms under the hood got an overhaul, with some big differences.

Loved “Lightning Control”? Seriously, who didn't? You got to hurl lightning bolts the length of the battlefield with the destructive power of a tank gun, one of the highest “to hit” numbers in the game, a personal force field, and the ability to control or fry electronic devices.  It’s still there, shiny and familiar.

But, it has also evolved. Previously, if you wanted machine control, you had to customize a power. No big deal (V&V is famous for being tweakable), but now you don't have to guess and negotiate with the GM how to strip out that one feature, does that reduce the PR cost, and can I get another roll on the Skills table to use up the other half of that Lightning Control power slot I'm not using? Pft. Now you pick how much machine control you want and spend your leftover CP on something else. Easy peasy.

The vague and fluid “skill system” persists, but now you also get some rules for how to make skill checks, and you can buy bonuses, too. This remains good and bad. For people who love mega-granular skill systems, like Mutants & Masterminds or GURPS, you just don't have that. But, if the “Um, sure, I guess a Background in Transportation means you can drive the InterCrime Super Tank,” was way too vague, at least now you've got a nice middle road of “I don't know, nothing in your background mentions stolen experimental space planes, make a skill save at -6 and see what happens.”

The combat system has been massively streamlined. Some people will love this, some will hate it. V&V 2e has a pretty (if not literally) unique combat system in all of mainstream RPGs. It was also confusing and often totally unsatisfying (e.g. HTH had basic 25% “to hit,” so just about *everyone* carried a weapon, just for the attack bonus, even when it otherwise made zero sense).  The new system still uses the “roll less than target number on a d20,” only the target numbers are pretty flat, less wildly affected by the target’s active defenses than in 2e, and based on the attackers Agility Save (typically 11- or 12-, which is read as “11 or less”). The net effect, from my experimentation, is that most attacks now have about a 50% to 60% chance of hitting.

MP also follows the general evolution of games and replaces the venerable “armor class” mechanic (where the defense prevents the attack from causing damage, at all) with damage reducing powers, so you're more likely to cause damage, but the target probably has a defense that reduces the amount of damage caused.

Is It “Living Legends”?

Absolutely not, but if you're familiar with LL, you can see the resemblance everywhere you look.

Back around 1997, Jeff published the “Advanced VnV” rules on his website, as kind of a “fan extension” of 2e. The rules were definitely an “after market bolt on” of a CP system and skill system to the VnV 2e rules.  I still have a copy, and you can still find “AVnV” converted characters on my website, because fatherhood has been more important to me than cleaning up the old site. “AVnV” was clunky and chunky, but kind of fun.

Living Legends represented a commercial offshoot of ideas - it introduced the MP Universe, and all of this definitely carries forward into the MP game, where it got polished and refined.  If anything, LL was the “wind tunnel testbed” for a lot of ideas originally intended for VnV 3e/MP, where the ideas got hammered out, and released to the public. As the saying goes “No product design survives contact with the customer,” and the feedback helped refine the development of ideas now at the core of MP.

Mechanically, LL was built as a point-buy game. It can compete with HERO System in terms of benefit of number crunching and skill granularity. That is to say, there is a point cost benefit to making a piece of equipment a battlesuit (hard to remove, save 1/3 total point cost), or a magic staff (easy to remove, save 1/2 total point cost).

Personally, I kind of wish the skill system had made it from LL into MP, because I love granular skill systems. But, I also realize it wouldn't have worked for MP, because both mechanical and thematic design are different. MP has a skill system that makes sense for MP.

MP does have a lot more math and complex lookup tables than 2e, and this clearly descends from the same evolutionary branch as LL.  MP represents that marriage of “lessons learned” that shaped the re-engineering of the game.

About the only mechanical bit that seems to have been ported wholecloth from LL is the Wealth system. I think abstracted Wealth systems work great, and save a lot of time, and cut out a lot of pointless bickering.  The baseline d4 Wealth is enough to let the average hero not worry about a roof or meals, and generally ignore “cost of living” as a story issue.  Spending CP on Wealth or Poverty is cheap and has immediate and simple effects on the character’s purchasing power, reflected by target number. The PC wants to buy something? The GM consults the lookup table, makes a decision on target number, and says “roll it.” Easy.

Damage Types

You find references to Damage Types, Damage Subtypes and Damage Forms throughout the book. This was a model fully fleshed out and integral to LL. To fully understand what is going on with Damage Types in the MP, I recommend you buy a copy of LL.  It’s not necessary, just helpful.

Unfortunately, MP has what looks like an unpolished attempt to simplify the idea (I know, I just uttered a disparaging remark - HERESY!). By “unpolished,” I mean that the Damage Types table has been stripped way down, dumping Subtypes entirely from the table and reducing Damage Forms to mere examples of the Damage Type.  That's fine, except when Invulnerability mentions the Electromagnetic subtype, and the reader has to guess which Energy Damage Type examples are “Electromagnetic,” or Natural Weaponry mentions Sharp Kinetic damage as if it's important, but it's really only important to players and GMs who like to role-play a distinction in ways that Kinetic attacks can hurt people. (In GURPS, for example, bullets did Blunt damage, although most people tend to think of small pointy things flying at about the speed of sound as “Sharp Kinetic.”)

Weaknesses

All the old favorites are back, and they got updated, too.

My favorite refresh is in the “Reduced Characteristic” weaknesses.  Taking a hit to Agility or Intelligence still sucks, but now each of the Weaknesses also has a random table to attach a descriptive condition, and a secondary attribute takes a hit also. For example, under Reduced Agility is “Gawky,” which at the -5 CP level is -3 AG and -2 ST.  It spreads the suck a little, but - more importantly - provides instant role-play framework for why the character has that condition.

“Prejudice” got a nice re-write, and it makes a lot more sense now. Thematically, it's exactly the same, but with a clearer explanation and examples. Mechanically, I think it might be a bit harsh, but the point is supposed to be that people loathe and distrust the character, so maybe calling it “harsh” is just me being a nice guy.

It's Not A Point Buy Game

MP has a point-buy system, but so does Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion. Do not let the point buy system get in the way. It's meant as a convenience and framework tool. Get hung up on tweaking it, and you'll make yourself crazy.  

As previously mentioned, Living Legends, GURPS and HERO System have very mature point-buy mechanisms that are fun to muck with and tweak about, and see what you can munchkin, and things hold together.

Mighty Protectors, like Savage Worlds SPC or Mutants & Masterminds has a comparatively  simple point buy system. It works well as a toolkit for organizing your character and managing relative power levels, but there is zero satisfaction in trying to min-max it.

For example, as mentioned previously, in games like LL, there are cost benefits to choosing a battlesuit or a battlestaff. For powerful equipment, the difference can be huge and, and the iconic Staff of the Magi has piles more flexibility and utility than Iron Man’s armor, at the same point cost. The disadvantage? Iron Man can wrestle the Staff away from the wizard, but not vice-versa.

In MP, your point shavings are tiny, and Iron Man and the Wizard both save about as many points - except the Wizard is easier to disarm.  Like I said, zero satisfaction, so don’t make yourself crazy.

Gender Issues

You’re going to hear a lot of about this section, so I’m going to mention it.  

In about one-quarter of one page, in a 148 page manuscript, the authors very tastefully acknowledge that the world is a very complicated place, and biology and psychology often conflict with each other.  

In other words, the random gender determination is no longer “roll a die: odd=male, even=female,” but has expanded to be more inclusive, such that it includes the (extremely rare) possibility of a person born as a woman, that thinks of himself as a man, and grooms and dresses in a way that doesn’t broadcast any gender, and is attracted to men.

Realistic?  Well, that really depends on your own personal view of the world.  Ask any ten people if they think that “is realistic,” and you’ll get 17 opinions, 8 shouting matches, 2 fist-fights, and possibly shot.  Just for asking.  Yeah, people get kind of funny about “gender issues.”

Frankly, I recommend treating this small block of text the same way you would treat any block of text in any role-playing game you’ve ever picked up: if you like it, use it, and if you don’t like it, pretend it doesn’t exist.  Really, unless you happen to be a person experiencing “gender identity” issues (who understandably might find it refreshing to have a game that recognizes you exist), this section just ain’t worth getting excited about.

Will You Love It?

Hell, I still don't especially like DnD 4e, but I've learned to enjoy it for what it is.

I've waited 35 years for Villains and Vigilantes 3e. And, because Jeff Dee - who really is human, it turns out, and not the demi-god of my youth - has always been responsive to the VnV community, I've been lucky enough to see a bit of the ride from 2e to 3e.

If you love VnV, I’m confident you’ll love Mighty Protectors.

Trust me, I'm Grognard :-)