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Vigilance Press has been dedicated to bringing cross-system materials out in a way that few other companies have. This requires an understanding of many different game systems, and more importantly, a core concept that remains consistent, so that each game or supplement can express that core concept in the "language" of their own game. Wargames 2, reviewed here in its Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition format, is a good example of how that can be done successfully.
Wargames 2 posits a superheroic world that has been plunged into the Cold War, and focuses primarily on the 1980s. The Cold War is interesting in comic book worlds. During the actual 1960s and 70s, comics were going through the Silver Age, a time frame we associate with innocence and wonder. However, when we look back on the Cold War period in the post-Soviet-collapse world we live in, we see a great deal of moral ambiguity and even tragedy. Wargames 2 tries to walk this line closely. Although there are goofy world-spanning conspiracies like the SPECTRE-a-like PHANTOM, there are also darker groups like the Fourth Reich and more "realistic" situations portrayed, like providing counterintelligence. In general, though, it tries to make espionage seem more effective in a comic book world, looking to exceptionally well-trained and well-outfitted superheroes for its inspiration rather than mutants or gods, and looking at heroism like a job or something you enlist for rather than a calling.
The overwhelming majority of the book is worldbuilding, describing the bases, personnel, key leaders and agendas of national agencies and independent organizations operating during this alternate 1980s. It's very thorough and keeps to that line between goofy and serious as closely as it can.
The stats of the characters are well-thought-out, though there are a few oddball things that require you to have the Ultimate Power sourcebook to really figure out. (These are minor and easily altered, though, and at this late date who hasn't picked up Ultimate Power in one sale or another?)
If there is something I could suggest to improve this book, it's that there's not a clear direction for me on how I should run this game differently from my normal Mutants & Masterminds game, which assumes a much broader variety of characters that are brought together by the "superhero team" concept rather than the "1980s espionage" concept. What techniques still work and which ones need to be changed?
In general, Wargames 2 is a solid attempt to look at the Cold War time frame through a superheroic lens and bring some excitement to a superheroic field that's (nowadays) well supported in the comics but much more rarely so in comic book RPGs.
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