People look for a variety of things in a resource for a game, and every person has different interests. Some need help setting up a world, and populating it with events and people to make it easier for the players to roleplay their hero characters. For others, it provides a new source of villains, non-player Character (NPC) heroes, and "hooks" to start up an evening of fun. For still others, it may primarily provide new ideas for power designs; new ways of combining talents and skills, powers, advantages, and limitations. Some may even use the character builds in a sourcebook as a template - assuming that the writers have created balanced characters, and their heroes and villains should look similar. For myself, I love a good story. I enjoy reading the backgrounds and histories of the characters; the disadvantages (frequently the psychological quirks make a villain) as much as the power sets. How well do they fit together; and how well do they make the story go? These are the questions that make a good supplemental resource book for me in general.
Based on these questions, in my estimation, The Fires of War: the Algernon Files Volume 2 is very good. Very, very good. For those that like numbers, I'd give it an overall 8 out of 10. The back story and setting is incredible in its detail and flow. The characters are creatively designed, and written; and their histories very coherent (more on that later). If you want my general impression, it's a good buy that will enhance anyone's gaming - but particularly those who use the Golden Age setting for any reason. It has its little quirks that nagged at my consciousness throughout the reading of the whole book; but in the main, its strengths far outweighed them. In the remainder of the article, I'd like to analyze some of the strengths and weaknesses of the book as I look at the world/campaign setting, then the book's method of dividing up information, and finally the character creation itself.
The world setting here was one of the strengths of this book. Rarely have I seen one - for any gaming system - that provided as complete a history and setting for the world. I did not have the opportunity to read The Algernon Files Volume 1 before reading this; but it was not much of a hindrance. Without rewriting book 1 into book 2, the authors did a remarkable job of folding people, places and events from within the first book into the second. As to this volume, its timeline was an invaluable resource. It was so well written - so believable in creating that "Golden Age" feel - that my wife (who knows less about comics in general than my six-year-old who doesn't read yet) said, "Wow. Were these real comic heroes/stories written back then? If so, were they written throughout World War I and II, or after the finish of World War II"? People, if my wife says "Wow", your work is well written.
The authors point out that they are focused on the years of 1930 - 1942; and they have done that well indeed. Nevertheless, they go well beyond those years, particularly with individual character creations and histories. As they move from group to group, and almost epoch to epoch, the authors create a living world that is full of danger, excitement, madness, and even humor. It is gritty in its realism about death, and the chances of achieving that - even with heroes.
In fact, one of the deepest drawbacks for me, few as they were, was that it was almost too gritty at times. Almost too dark for the historic comic feel; more like the pulp fiction that was supposed to be fading. Perhaps this is done intentionally, to create that sense of timeliness, as if pulp fiction had an impact on comics of that time. But I do not believe it did. Most of the earliest comics were focused on the best and brightest about humankind, and the irrepressible nature of patriotism, heroism, and the American way. This grittiness follows through the entire book, and really impacts their closing, as they have a sort of "Whatever happened to…" section. Admittedly, they make the point in the beginning of the section that it is "for those that like closure". Still so many were murdered, or died fighting archenemies (the bad guys died just as frequently), or even - in one case - got married and then died after 6 years in a plane wreck reminiscent of Buddy Holly's.
For the most part, this book is divided up well. It follows with the World Wars theme in many ways, having the "Allies", the "Enemies", and the "Independents." These larger sections are broken up into various groups, and then individual characters. It would have been nice if the larger sections had their own Title Heading in the book, rather than just in the Table of Contents. Maybe they could even have had each group listed as "Allies: Name of group" For someone just reading through the book, it meant a bit of flipping back and forth; and particularly with e-books, that is a real pain. However, once you are through that minor detail, it gets very good. At the beginning of each team, the authors have written a very concise, yet detailed history of the group. It covered not only the focus times, but even went beyond those in a number of cases. They described the group's relationship with the local government, various secret societies that were detailed in the Algernon Files volume 1, and even how they worked as a team. For the GM using this as a setting resource in particular, this part of the book shines. The notes that they provided here would be invaluable to both playing the characters as NPCs should new players "join" the team, or to coordinate interactive play should players actually use the characters in the book as provided. The authors' formatting was clear, and they included all the bases and vehicles that a group might have. This, for folks like me, is truly a gift - creating maps and details of such "extras" is an onerous and despised task required only to keep some players from abusing the situation by giving bases abilities never envisioned without paying for them. The pictures, too were absolutely wonderful - as was most of the artwork in the book.
"Here is the meat of the book," some would say. I'm finally getting to the actual heroes and villains the book uses! Well, you may be in for some surprises in this book. The characters are creatively made, and once again their histories and backgrounds are very detailed and concise. The authors made greater use of Perks and Skills than any other resource I have seen, and thus have better rounded characters overall. The characters made extensive use of the skills for Fantasy Hero; and it would depend on the GM adjudicating whether "deadly blow," etc., would fit in their game. Others, like "rapid healing," and "fearless" are pretty easy to convert over, though I would have a tendency to skip fearless (except with automatons) and give a character a lack of weakness or bonus PRE against fear based attacks. The authors also gave almost all characters different, multiple combat skills; some overall, some bonuses specific to HtH or ranged, and some DCV. It differed from character to character, but all had multiple bonuses. One character had a complete bonus of +12 to his attack roll, if he threw everything he could into that roll.
Of course, this doesn't come without cost; and this is where the book may be weakest, in my humble opinion. The average character in the game is 600 CP+. Now, I may be out of touch, but most games I have played in over the last 20 years have run 300-400CP. In one game we were given 500 CP, and the GM said "that should be enough for you to do whatever you want, and you can concentrate on the role-playing instead of power gaming." This overpowering is important in some ways, because there was also much less use of defenses - particularly resistant defenses. Even from powerhouse characters like Ulysses "Doc" Steele it only showed 5pts of rPD - though I will admit damage resistance for 15/15 PD/ED was purchased. If that was to be added on top of what was shown, then it simply becomes a pain in the patella to coordinate, as a GM. This weakness was in other characters as well, however. Iron Skull had NO resistant defenses listed, and 10 pts of Armor (activation 15-) in the powers - yet this wimpy 500 pt character was a cyborg made of steel whose picture showed pretty much everything but half his head being covered in steel plating.
Given the prevalence of killing attacks (guns, rifles, etc), playing the game with these characters becomes very deadly and not very comic like. Most characters in comics die when they nobly sacrifice themselves to save the earth/universe/take your pick. Most of these could die from a mafia hit-man sniping them. Of course, at least a third of them had "resurrection", so they wouldn't stay dead; yet that is not the normal method for handling the four color approach to most Champions games.
Also, while the skills were extensively used in good ways, and I really liked and learned from what they did with skill sets, they were also abused in many. I lost count of how many characters knew at "native" level 5 or more languages. Why not just give them "Universal Translator", and be done with it? I know that some of the characters were based in Europe, and people over there are much more likely to know multiple languages - but not at the native level. Basic conversation, or maybe fluency. Not idiomatic or native.
All griping aside, I found the characters that were created to be fresh, coherent, fit into the story settings, and nicely made overall, if a little too powerful and overly skilled in some areas that didn't make sense to me. My favorite character by far was the measly 400 pt "The Gryphon"; with his obnoxious perfection, his wacky idiosyncrasies, and his wonderful secret source of his powers. He is a great example of the kind of creativity, dedication, and humor that the authors of this book consistently display in their work.
As can be seen, this book is of highest quality in art, in historical setting and coherence. It is of very high quality in character creation, and has all the subsidiary stuff that differentiates a top notch resource from a run of the mill one. Altogether, this book is worth the cost, and I hope you will consider it for one of your Champions resources.