Publisher: Adamant Entertainment | Author: Mike Lafferty | Pages: 58 | Year: 2007 | Adventure: 5 (Awesome) | Substance: 4 (Above Average) | Art & Layout: 3 (Average)

The 6th Seal offers the Superlink a continent devastated by an apocalyptic disaster that leaves everything in shambles. Help is hard to come by and danger is right around the corner of every neighborhood. The feel is more Iron-Age bringing back memories of the grim and gritty nature of many indie comics of the 90s and even today. Four-colored heroics and action does not really match the style of this setting right off the bat, but a little creativity can change that any day.

The cool thing about The 6th Seal is that even though it is set in a world with this broad theme, the adventures help to ground characters into the setting as a starting point offering the opportunity to continue adventuring in this world afterwards if the GM wishes.

Section 1
The Earthquake Hits
Adventures: Disaster Strikes and Prison Riot

The great earthquake hits and it’s time to get your hero’s groove on! This book’s first adventure opens up right in the action. Something I really enjoy about how these adventures are set up is that there is a “Mini-Challenge” section early on that offer suggestions for GMs to run for their players if the moment is right, if they need a time filler or if they simply want to get as much out of the adventure as possible.

These mini-challenges aren’t even the typical mook throw-down. In this first adventure, 4 out of 5 challenges involve character interaction with stuff other then round by round villain mashups. This offers the opportunity for many different types of characters to shine. This is where the multitude of power options in a Superlink game really pays off for story telling and roleplaying!

When it IS time for a villain faceoff, The 6th Seal offers a heated hero called Brimstone. The scaling options are well described: simple, clean presentation and easy to apply last minute. The encounter is kept simple at this point with the villain having one particular goal in mind at the beginning of the encounter. With the right hero teamup this encounter could turn out to be quite short, but creative GMs should be well advised to make great use of the thug mooks and potential danger to onlookers and other random civilians caught in the crossfires of ensuing battle!

Once again, with encounter specific mini-challenges, The 6th Seal makes sure you have ample opportunity to make a seemingly simple encounter with a standard “average” villain more complex based on the experience of the players at the table or efficiency of the team’s dynamics.

Section 2
Life After the Quake

This section details key facts of life after the great quake. With the military occupied and stretched thin, Centennial City pretty much has to take care of itself. With the police and some National Guard troops being the best in non-supered defense, superhero assistance of any kind is almost a necessity.

Notable factions are mentioned and between super-powered thugs, a mystical death cult gang, skinhead survivalists and an underground vampire colony, I’m not sure how else this setting could provide an abundance of options for GMs to throw at their players if they decided to make The 6th Seal a major playing ground for long periods of time.

The mooks of each faction are detailed in another section. Instead of reprinting all the mook stats, The 6th Seal references mook statistics from M&M with alterations to their powers or equipment. It’s seems a good enough thing to do. It keeps the section tight and lets GMs have a little freedom when putting specific individuals together. I can see how some may have wished to at least have one of each sample mook printed for easy reference, but I believe the additional equipment options are variety enough. Once you copy the mook out of M&M once, you’ll be more or less good to go on many fronts on that alone… so no point in complaining strongly about it.

Two allies are detailed. The first, Red Specter, is a street avenger who patrols the city by night who wears the armor of his deceased nazi-fighting grandfather. He reminded me immediately of Batman’s street protector personality. The second is, Silver Lynx, a villain super-theif turned refugee-protector after being taken in by St. Augustine’s Cathedral.

Villains Mentioned:

• Nektrotic, the black magic Ghost Posse gang leader is detailed with a history connecting him to the vampire forces in Centennial City.
• Dead Hand Jenkins of the 59er Disciples is next with his ambitions to take his small gang to big places in Centennial City as the “iron fist” that rules them all.
• The Templar of the Rattail Grenadiers, a racial supremacy gang follows, with his power suit offering opportunities to lead skinhead survivalists to the top of the criminal underworld in Centennial City.
• The Atomiknight, a mercenary villain who works for the highest bidder with no conscience.
• Midnight Bombardier used to have the most powerful gang in the city now he takes advantage of the chaos to increase his turf and get revenge on the Police Department. With the help of high ups in his gang like Iron Liberator and Red Front from Russia and Black Death, an assassin from Japan, and a psionic loan-shark, he’s more then capable of making a hero’s life full of entertainment.

Conclusions

I think the skeleton for the gang network across Centennial City was well described and detailed just enough to get things moving. One thing I did wish there was more of was the kind of detail that made me love the adventure sections. I wished the villain writeups featured mini adventure plots or adventure hooks; maybe offered a small section on which other gangs or gang leaders were seen as allies, neutrals or enemies. This could help a GM flesh out the gang politics without too much effort. Right now it leaves too much open (which is great for the GM who likes full control on these kinds of details in their settings).

Adventures: Arms Race, Rise of the Undead and Barbarians at the Gates

My feelings are similar to those expressed in the first two adventure review above. I loved the mini-challenges. Once again they offer more “complications” based on the surrounding area and dilemmas than things you can punch into the ground.

We get to see some inter-gang dynamics here which helps resolve the point above a little more. Also, like the first two adventure reviews, the final villain fights can go as fast or as long as the GM wishes based on how complicated they want to make the encounter by using the mini-challenges.

The second adventure here with Silver Lynx also offers a great “grey area” roleplaying opportunity that is always fun. Follow the law, or turn a blind eye for the greater good; a common place theme in comics and always enjoyable to see played out at the table.

The third adventure culminates in a massive all-out battle between the four main gangs and the police with Red Specter and the heroes to stand in the way! This is the kind of battle that used to happen in 90s Annuals! It’s make or break times and the heroes are what stand in the way of a civilization collapsing even further into chaos or strengthening it to push forward into the darkness (cinematic enough description or what?)

Appendix A: Seasoning Encounters

If mini-challenges weren’t enough, there is an appendix at the end with MORE mini encounters to sprinkle into the moments between all the critical adventure events. One thing I wished was added to each encounter was a Power Level rating. Power Levels do not always indicate perfectly what characters would be up against but it helps gage an encounter for GMs (like me) who might run one of them on the fly and just roll with what’s on the page until it’s too late for the heroes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was a nice read and an entertaining setting to envision being wrapped around the continent your heroes live on, or scaled down with the alternate history of being centered only on the city the heroes live in. In any case, it can be run alone as a temporary cataclysmic event, or stretched out to apocalyptic proportions. There’s enough here to run a whole hero’s campaign on before moving on to other heroes and settings.

I am a fan of scalability, and this was almost perfect. I just wish the same details and options applied to the adventures was applied to the character writeups. I’m also getting a little tired of seeing the same art crop up across Superlink products. I can understand the reason for this (costly) and at the end of the day, art in PDF products (for me) usually get scanned past or only acknowledged for “essence” value only.

Other then that, this Superlink product was tight and would be a worthwhile addition to your PDF collection. With the lack of adventures out there for the Superlink community, it’s good to see additions like these in the Superlink-o-sphere!

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