Publisher: Adamant Entertainment | Author: Mike Lafferty | Pages: 84 | Year: 2007
Adventure: 5 (Awesome) | Substance: 5 (Awesome) | Art & Layout: 3 (Average)

Defcon 1 is an M&M Superlink supplement covering all that’s needed to run Eastern and Western Block heroes in a Cold War setting. This supplement allows players and GMs to decide whether they want to play in the actual Cold War or whether the Cold War is now behind them (but not quite forgotten).

Mike Lafferty does an absolutely tremendous job at making this supplement easy to read and implement without much confusion on the part of any players not familiar with Cold War events. The characters are all very dynamic from a design perspective allowing them to be used as allies, enemies, good guys, bad guys, complications, buddies… I know it seems like I’m repeating myself with these words but what makes an ally doesn’t always make a buddy, what makes a bad guy doesn’t necessarily make him the enemy, etc. Trust me Lafferty does a much better job of making this all straight forward and easy to incorporated into any game.

The introduction story alone sets up the perfect example of what I tried to describe above. The Texan cosmic defender (I know that alone is awesome right… picture it, the guys language is perfect too) get caught up in a city fight with a giant robot until a duo of Russian supers come in and take down the robot. A bit of back and forth happens until Lone Star’s temper causes him to blast the Russian tank in classic four-color comic book fashion where two heroes have to brawl before they end up working together. Awesome.

Section 1: Roleplaying Concepts

All the examples in the book could be great additions to any Superlink game. After describing a concept, the book gives complications, scenarios and nicely backs up each with a couple movie references and comic industry counter parts.

It goes into further details and examples for “Story-Arcs”, “Plot Twists”, and by far my favourite concept, the “Thought Bubble” moment. These moments are prevalent in comics so why not in a comic book inspired roleplaying game? There is a lot of room for metagaming that could weaken the benefits from this roleplaying opportunity. If you can strip your character’s thoughts from your player thoughts, this could add a new layer of entertainment to your gaming session.

Section 2: The Characters

You may still be wondering how a group of players can make US, British and Russian heroes and use them in the same team? That’s what this section breaks down. The keystone to the whole thing coming together is an international security group called UNMSF (United Nations Meta Security Force). Think of them as something like the Security Council with a little mix of United Nations.

Even this group is not without being used with some of the spice mentioned in Section 1. For example, it was common during the Cold War era for governments to post their heroes into the USMSF in order to spy on opposing forces.

First up are the Soviet (or Russian… I go back and forth because it depends on whether you’re playing in the historic setting or in modern times). The book gives some suggestions for Russian phrases, quotes and suggested battlecries.

The character roll follows detailing five Eastern Block characters and seven Western Block characters. They can be used as characters or non-player characters, with options suggested for how to use them as either. Each entry provides a Shtick, a Twist, a Hook, a Scenerio and/or a Complication (mentioned in Section 1 as new concepts to spice up the roleplaying element of your game).

My favourites: Red Hammer. Imagine a Russian old time hero with the scepticism of Nick Fury, the patriotism super-soldier status of Captain America or loyal dedication of Superman, with a demonic connection to Hell’s grasp like Spawn. Except Russian. Great stuff can come of a character like this, as a player or an NPC to move along a campaign.

Second runner up is incidentally Red Hammer’s counterpart… kind of. John Bull is a British hero who went under the same Nazi super-soldier process as Red Hammer. The process wasn’t duplicated correctly and he was the sole survivor, mutated to take on the appearance of a minotaur. The fact that he’s a recluse and paints and gardens on his time off just won it for me. Once I saw the image of him with his stolen Nazi electro-mace, I knew he’d be the Western favourite.

The best addition to this list is the Plot Hook. Six characters have Hooks meaning you have yourself six mini sessions to take up an evening of play.

Session 3: Mini Adventure

The next 30 pages are dedicated to a mini adventures that brings the whole book together and sets itself up as a catalyst for players to continue in this kind of setting if they wish.

A feature I found unique was the way the “action items” of any particular part of the adventure were laid out cleanly for the GM to follow and inject into their game. Things like providing Roleplaying Scenerio (Section 1) opportunities for players to enter into pre-formulated Shticks, Complications, Roleplaying Opportunities, etc.

The adventure doesn’t follow a rigid plan. In a superhero game, more than traditional fantasy (in my opinion and experience) it’s difficult to put any expected actions into a strict formula. Super powers are so random that fluidity in the adventure design is just as important as the variety of objectives that exist to take up an evening of play (or multiple evenings). This mini-adventure provides such scenarios that flesh out a scene as a stepping stone into the next section.

Encounters also provide scaling options for teams that are made to walk all over particular encounters. These are well described and easy to implement. In some instances more setting related sidebar content is added, sometimes connecting adventure bits to the characters described in the Characters section. This helped unify it all once again into a cohesive product.

Appendix I and Appendix II detail The Ice Palace, a Nazi base hidden in the cold regions of Antarctic, which is mentioned in one of the adventures and includes a map.

Conclusion

Final thoughts… Buy the book! I have taken some time off roleplaying in general but this book made me want to either play M&M again or jump back onto City of Heroes and play one of my “flag heroes”… American Eagle, Northwind (Captain Canada), Manowar (Portuguese)…

The only place this book didn’t completely win me over was the art and the use of old propaganda pictures. It wasn’t that either was bad, I just never felt they kept a uniformity over the entire product. The design of the book is very simple and clean which makes it a fast and east read, I can’t really complain about that. I’m just a very visual person. But the art aside, the content was just golden and did enough for me to visualize my own take on the setting which was good enough for me.

Buy at RPG Objects.com

Related Posts

• DC Universe Fanzines for the M&M Superlink
• Super Unicorn Unbridled: The Front in the Spotlight, by Sean Glenn
• Super Unicorn Unbridled: Reserved for The Reserve, by Erik Mona and Sean Glenn