I
first learned about Villains & Vigilantes when I was on a backpacking trip
one summer. Our group stopped at this little town somewhere in North Carolina
so everybody could shower and gas up the van, and the place we stopped to do
that had this little mom and pop shop that had, strangely enough, a display
case of modules for various Fantasy Games Unlimited systems. No idea what that
was doing there, and the only other one I remember is the Daredevils one that
had the dinosaurs. Since I needed some reading material for the long drive out
to our next stop I laid down two bucks for the one that had a superhero
fighting a samurai on the cover, and that’s how I picked the suit colors for
Kamen Rider Tarock.
Search
for the Sensei was one of the last things released for Villains &
Vigilantes before its multi-decade hiatus, and one of the things that endeared
it to me back in the day was just how much of a relic of the 80’s it ended up being,
when we first heard about ninja warriors and thought they were the coolest
thing ever even though all we had to go off of were stupid low-budget action
movies.
Part
of it is the author’s praised for his obvious love and knowledge of Japanese
culture on the inside cover. These days it’s a lot easier to look at names like
Sin-Ting Kenokogi, Lotus Sawara and Chai-Li Shigetta and chuckle at the idea
that they’re supposed to sound like the names of actual Japanese people. Or
Tetsuya Kori. Yes, that is a real Japanese name. But it’s a man’s name.
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| Yeah, even with my shitty scanner... |
There’s
even a pronunciation guide in the back, with accents made in
ink by hand. That’s dedication right there.
I
should probably talk about the actual adventure at some point, shouldn’t I?
Things open on one of the PC’s happening upon some thugs about to mug a teenage
girl, “and who knows what else”. Luckily our hero is hopefully more than a match
for a couple of two-bit gangbangers and can learn that the victim is Sin-Ting
Kenokogi , who lost her ability to speak by the psychological shock of seeing
her mother murdered. A gimmick that even the adventure basically admits will
get really annoying if none of the PC’s is a telepath.
Besides
just being accosted, she’s distraught because her father, diplomat Shiro
Kenokogi, has disappeared without a trace. And unbeknownst to them he’s not
only been kidnapped by super-powered yakuza, but was also formerly the masked
crusader known as the Sensei, but put away his costume when his wife was
killed. Hence the title.
The
encounters and maps are designed pretty decently. For some reason the thing I
still remember best is that Sin-Ting is apparently a big fan of Scott Baio.
Also an encounter with a hero called the Rising Sun (the dude on the cover)
where it’s setup for the PC’s to think he’s a villain and get in a bit of good
old poorly-motivated hero vs. hero stuff. Once that’s resolved he can help them
out as an NPC, although he probably makes a better meat shield than an actual
helper in a fight.
Because
of his big Invulnerability score, I mean.
Looking back, I
think the villains were a little underwhelming after sampling more of what
the game was like, though, with other modules typically having a great mix of
really unique villains (if often kind of goofy ones). One is just Odd Job from Goldfinger, killer hat and all. A couple
of the earlier ones are mainly just ladies who fight with gimmicked staffs,
little different from the legions of ninja warriors who reinforce them.
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| They all have their own names even with recycled portraits. That's adorable. |
And
what kind of name is “Dowager” for a cloning villainess with a gimmicked staff?
If
the heroes should triumph over the yakuza through the various encounters, piece
together the clues and manage to save Shiro Kenokogi from the high-tech
samurai, it promises that the main bosses, who make these guys look like Girl
Scouts, will be out for revenge.
But
then V&V went on hiatus for over 20 years, the publishers lost touch with a
lot of their contributors, and the manuscript for the sequel got lost in the
mail when Fantasy Games Unlimited moved their offices to a different state. Fortunately
they eventually got in touch again and it turned out the author still had a
copy in a drawer somewhere, and here we have the final chapter in the “Sensei”
duology.
The
sequel does open with some small disappointments. First is just a matter of
personal taste, but it brings up a superhero team called the Alliance who were
the ones who saved the day in Search for the Sensei if the GM decides to run
the second module without the first. I was kinda hoping for character sheets
for them, filling out their ranks from the heroes seen on the back covers of both modules. To have someone to crash
in and come to the rescue if the players get in trouble, if you need a gameplay
justification, maybe.
I
just like having premade NPC heroes and especially hero teams sometimes that I
can drop into my campaign to add some color, or maybe to have other heroes
around the players can show up by saving the day and feeling more like they’ve
accomplished great things at the end of a session. Or have to try harder
because they themselves were outdone by some NPC’s in the end. Pre-Emptive
Strike threw in a team like that for no real reason, I wouldn’t mind seeing it
done more often.
Another
thing is the kickoff for the adventure, where the yakuza send a trio of
assassins to get rid of the heroes/avenge the organization’s previous defeat.
Counters for them actually appeared in Search for the Sensei.
In
the new artwork they just look like generic ninja, which is a bit of a letdown.
In
fact, most of the new villains are basically ninja. The three assassins are
ninja. A villain in each of the three other encounters is a ninja. Shiro
Kenokogi will resume his heroic identity as the Sensei to help out the players
as an NPC, yet another ninja. And of course there’s all the ones as faceless
underlings.
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| So many damn ninja... |
Where’s
the imagination? Ninja are cool, of course, but you can have too much of a good
thing. You can over rely on something even as cool as them to carry your work.
Also,
no disrespect to the author, but I much preferred the almost woodcut-like look
of the older artwork than the cartoony newer stuff. And I can’t help wondering
if that’s tied into changing the assassins from supervillains to dime a dozen
ninja.
 |
| Then... |
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| ...now |
There
are some interesting encounters in the sequel, and the big baddie is fairly
interesting even if he feels like a scaled-back Mandarin (his main firepower
comes from six magic rings, each with a different power). There are some cute
little Asian additions to the V&V bestiary that the PC’s might need to
contend with on their way to the boss’s fortress too (although frankly if they
could handle the muggers at the beginning of the first module it’s damn hard to
imagine these being a threat).
The
big time lapse wasn’t especially kind to it, though. “Search for the Sensei”
came out when we were just getting our first taste of Japanese culture here in
the states, when it was so cool and mysterious and those of us who were
interested in such things ate up anything we could get our hands on.
But
now it’s 2017. Japanese cultural imports are almost as easy to get as if you
actually lived there. We know what actual Japanese people’s names are like now.
More potential readers will probably think that the use of “sama” as a title like
“lord” or “master” is not exactly accurate (the big bad guy leader's villain name is "Ichiban Sama (Number One Master)"). And of course V&V itself has dipped its toe in the anime market in the years since its reawakening with stuff
like the Great Bridge-twofer.
Stripped of cheesy nostalgia, Revenge
of the Yakuza is a decent V&V module on its own merit. I particularly like
the final villain, I liked the two villains who’ll try to lure an opponent into
a weather-simulating chamber to give themselves the advantage. The enemy who
might become an ally in the final chapter if the truth about the big villain
comes out.
But
seriously, you can have too many
ninja.
