Trouble for Havoc

Champions, Superworld,
Villains & Vigilantes Module

Review by Michael Dawson


Written by Yurek Chodak, Donald Harrington, Charles Huber and Steve Perrin
Chaosium Inc. PO. Box 6302, Albany, CA 94706-0302
Released August, 1984
Catalog No, 2403
Price: $10.00
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: Poor

Trouble for Havoc is an anthology of three superhero adventure scenarios that are compatible with Superworld, Champions and Villains & Vigilantes. The book also contains a few pages of new powers and rules interpretations for the Superworld game system. Trouble for Havoc is a single 80-page softbound book with profuse illustrations by Chris Marrian and a brief introduction by Steve Perrin explaining the nature and organization of the book.

Attempting to make any adventure suitable for use with three different game systems is a big job, and for the most part the people at Chaosium have succeeded. Making Superworld characters work for Champions should not be too difficult, since the two systems share a common design philosophy, but the task of getting Superworld characters to fit into the Villains & Vigilantes system is a thankless job. It is a worthwhile attempt, since it makes the adventures available to a much larger audience and shows an admirable spirit of cooperation that is often lacking in the gaming industry

The scenarios themselves can be used as stand alone single adventures for different groups of players or heroes, or can be woven together into a series of adventures detailing the rise of the supervillain group Havoc and the increasing number of problems that they present to the player characters. The book contains eight new villains and eight new heroes to populate the world, and it is very likely that side interests arising from the three main adventures will grow into full- fledged adventures of their own with some help from the referee.

In general, Trouble for Havoc is a worthwhile book for providing a few stopgap adventures for a group of four to six average level heroes, or a slightly smaller group of more experienced heroes. The adventures are interesting, but they are not particularly exceptional. Perhaps of more interest are the kinds of changes that the scenarios can bring into a referees campaign, depending on the results of the player~ actions. They can range from the trivial to the colossal and might add whole new dimensions to the campaign, though it is also possible that the changes (the meltdown ot a nuclear reactor, for example) would do more severe damage to the campaign than the referee wishes. Where the possibility of major changes to a campaign exists kecause of the scenario, the authors are careful to point out ways the referee can avoid mangling his world.

There is a marked increase in the quality of the scenarios as you progress through the book. There is little in the Crisis at Caliente adventure to reveal to anyone that it is more than a quickly sketched out adventure for a pick up game on a Saturday night and shows very little possibility for roleplaying except through choice of combat actions.

The main villain character is pitifully stereotyped. Buyers should expect More interesting examples of character creation when buying a professional product. The Crisis adventure also includes elements of ultra-high technology that are fairly important to the scenario, but could well be of a higher tech level than the referee wants to allow into his game. The other two scenarios avoid gratuitous inclusion of common high tech hardware and also allow many more chances for roleplaying.

As the scenarios get better, so do the non-player characters. Glacier, the permanently frozen neanderthal villain from the Crisis scenario, gets only three short paragraphs for a description of his origin, training, attitudes, and personality It is a woefully short and dreadfully dull description of a poorly planned character.

However, there is one facet of character design that is lacking throughout the book. The simple job of converting characters from Superworld to Champions has been done very poorly. Villains who can put up a good fight in Superworld will be rolled right over by a group of beginner superheroes from Champions. The adaptation to Champions almost completely ignores the concept of levels, fails to understand the idea that Superworld stats work on a bell curve while Champions stats are a geometric progression, and completely handicaps at least half of the non-player characters (NPCs) by giving them SPEED stats of three or four and offense class values (OCVs)/defense class values (DCVs) of six.

These stats might be sufficient for dealing with the first group of heroes that the referee has ever created or run, but in short order most players realize that to be successful in Champions an OCV/DCV + levels of eight or better is necessary and a SPEED of five is almost standard. Yet, in Trouble for Havoc, Lumiere has a speed of three, and she is supposed to he a major villain leader. "Low & Slow" seems to be the best way to describe the way Trouble for Havoc has adapted Superworld characters to Champions.

In the same vein, the person who adapted the stats from Superworld to Champions has designed bad examples of what constitutes a valid character disadvantage. If the Soviet superheroes can have a 20 point disadvantage of "Staunch Communist," why can't an American hero have the 20 point disadvantage of "Staunch Capitalist?" Being a communist is not a psychological disadvantage any more than being dressed as a cowgirl is good for 14 or less unusual looks, yet all of the Soviet superheroes have that disadvantage, and Wild Wind, whose picture makes her look downright attractive, is given 15 points in disadvantages for being dressed as a cowgirl.

In several cases, the person adapting the stats ignored disadvantages listed on the Superworld character sheet in favor of these poorly planned psychological disadvantages. Superworld disadvantage such as 20% listen, 20% spot hidden," or "Clumsiness: 51% to Agility roll" are all things found on Superworld character sheets but missing on the Champions adaptation of the same character. With a little bit of ingenuity, a player can easily deal with these minuses in Champions terms, but the same thing can't be done in Trouble for Havoc.

The Champions stats are rife with more examples of bad character conversion, but space is too limited to give a really representative sample of them. if you play Champions and buy this book, be sure to go back over the stats in order to give the NPCs some real disadvantages.

Trouble for Havoc succeeds at providing some good bread-and-butter scenarios for a group of average PC heroes for any of the three systems it includes. Villain & Vigilante players will certainly get some surprises because of the numerous rules benclings that have been made to get the Superworld characters to work with the limited system. The scenarios are reminiscent of the world of comic books back in the mid- 1970s with the main focus of the book revolving around direct shoot-em-ups. The game lacks the level of plot intricacy found in most of the current popular comic books, though a clever referee can complicate the situations with links between the scenarios and other subplots. if you are looking for a set of adventures to keep your players busy between major events in your campaign, Trouble for Havoc is a good place to look.

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- Game News #4
To Game News List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2000 by Dana Lombardy.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com