Villains and Vigilantes

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{{Infobox RPG |title= Villains and Vigilantes |image= |caption= |designer= Jeff Dee, Jack Herman |publisher= Fantasy Games Unlimited |date= 1979 (1st edition)
1982 (Revised edition) |genre= Superhero fiction |system= Custom |footnotes= }} Villains and Vigilantes was a popular superhero-themed role-playing game (and arguably Fantasy Games Unlimited's most famous game) written by Jack Herman and Jeff Dee, competing primarily with Champions and Superworld in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Villains and Vigilantes was revised significantly between the first and second editions, and the art, while still primarily provided by Jeff Dee, also improved significantly. The rules were perhaps less flexible than either Champions or Superworld, but Villains and Vigilantes managed to maintain a comic book-like feel that other systems were lacking.

Bill Willingham's modules "Death Duel with the Destroyers" and "The Island of Dr. Apocalypse" served as the inspiration for his later Comico comic book series, Elementals.

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Crisis at Crusader Citadel

This was an introductory module, published in 1982 by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman. In it, the players controlled neophyte superheroes looking to apply for membership in the Crusaders, an esteemed team of superheroes. The Crusaders roster consisted of:

  • Manta Man, their leader, whose wife was killed by pirates and to exact revenge he built a costume that gave him the power to fly, breathe underwater and emit blasts of electricity.
  • Enforcer, a secret agent who betrayed his agency and saved a scientist who had developed a secret formula. Drinking the formula, he gained the ability to generate force fields. Enforcer also uses a specialized pistol.
  • Dreamweaver, a college student who gained the power to create illusions or become invisible from a dream research experiment.
  • Laserfire, a teeanger who gained powers of heat and light when he was caught in the thrust of an alien spacecraft taking off nearby.
  • Evergreen, part woman, part plant, and able to mentally control vegetation. At the time of the module, she does not know her true origins.
  • Blizzard, a comic book fan who decided to follow the lead of his print heroes when he developed his power to create ice.

The players need to contend with the Crusaders' opposite numbers during the adventure, a villain group called the Crushers. A few of its members include Mocker, a robot able to fire sonic blasts, Mercury Mercenary, a soldier of fortune with superhuman speed and Enforcer's personal archenemy, Shocker, who has acidic blood and electric blasts and yearns to have Evergreen's love as well, Bull, a strongman as short-tempered as his namesake, and Marionette, a midget who can control minds.

Four years after the adventure booklet was published, the characters of the module were used as the basis of a Villains and Vigilantes comic book mini series by Dee and Herman published by Eclipse Comics. Each issue included character sheets for the new heroes and villains introduced in the series and update material for the existing characters from the booklet for use in campaigns.

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List of Published Material

  • Crisis at Crusader Citadel
  • Death Duel with the Destroyers
  • The Island of Doctor Apocalypse (sequel to Death Duel with the Destroyers)
  • FORCE
  • Assassin! (sequel to FORCE)
  • The Dawn of DNA
  • From the Deeps of Space
  • Battle Above the Earth
  • To Tackle the T.O.T.E.M.
  • The Devil's Domain
  • The Pentacle Plot
  • Terror By Night
  • Pre-Emptive Strike
  • Organized Crimes
  • Honor
  • Search for the Sensei (a sequel adventure, Revenge of the Yakuza, was announced in the booklet but not published)
  • Alone Into the Night
  • The Secret in the Swamp
  • The Great Iridium Con
  • For the Greater Good
  • Dawn of the Devil (sequel to The Devil's Domain)
  • Breakin at 3 Kilometer Island (published by Judges' Guild)
  • Trouble For Havoc (published by Chaosium, Superworld adventure with V&V stats)
  • DNAgents Sourcebook
  • Opponents Unlimited (contained pre-created villains and villain teams)
  • Super-Crooks and Criminals (ibid)
  • Most Wanted (volumes 1 and 3; volume 2 was never published, ibid)
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