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Gotham City Sourcebook
The Gotham City Sourcebook provides detailed information on the people, places, and organizations of the Dark Knight's favorite city, as well as personal information and character statistics on Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Oracle, Azrael, and other characters of Batman's world. A supplement for the DC Universe Roleplaying Game.
120 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2002
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April 17, 2021
I'm going through a reread of all my West End RPG books. I have to give this one minus a star for some very strange reasons. The first being some minor typos. Which are always a pain but unfortunately very common in some of the second wave on up WEG DC products. (The company was close to bankruptcy when the line launched and they wanted to get as much product as the could out while they still had the license. Or a company for that matter. There was so much material in the works that two sourcebooks that were about 90% complete can be found online.) But the biggest error is that Sister Lilhy's character sheet cuts off right after physique. No stats for knowledge, perception, presence, no speed, PDV, P/L Bonus, Hero Points, Villain Points, or Characters Points. It was like they didn't notice or didn't care... they stuck it in there anyway. After all, she's such a minor character in the Bat mythos, no one would use her anyway.
But that brings to mind another problem. While it is great to have a lot of these supporting players who might ease the heroes into Batman's world... there are a lot of characters from Batman's world that I think were excluded that maybe shouldn't have been. The Outsiders for instance. Yeah, they hadn't been active for about three when this book came out. But they included Jason Todd at a time when Jason was dead as a doornail. Hush wasn't even a twinkle in Jeph Loeb's eye. Or they could have used Kobra who is mentioned in several entries... but does not get an entry of his own. Or so of the lame but secretly awesome villains like Crazy Quilt, Kite Man or Clock King.
Clock King seems like a real missed opportunity since 1. His two episode of B: TAS were well regarded and that show was still in first run when this book was produced. 2. The popularity of those episodes was giving him a bit of a renaissance at the time. Maybe not in the main Batbooks but in series that were at least Bat adjacent. (A cameo in the World's Finest Miniseries, a role in a JLA 80 page giant around that time... and right after this book hit the stands, he did a stint in the Suicide Squad.
But that brings to mind another problem. While it is great to have a lot of these supporting players who might ease the heroes into Batman's world... there are a lot of characters from Batman's world that I think were excluded that maybe shouldn't have been. The Outsiders for instance. Yeah, they hadn't been active for about three when this book came out. But they included Jason Todd at a time when Jason was dead as a doornail. Hush wasn't even a twinkle in Jeph Loeb's eye. Or they could have used Kobra who is mentioned in several entries... but does not get an entry of his own. Or so of the lame but secretly awesome villains like Crazy Quilt, Kite Man or Clock King.
Clock King seems like a real missed opportunity since 1. His two episode of B: TAS were well regarded and that show was still in first run when this book was produced. 2. The popularity of those episodes was giving him a bit of a renaissance at the time. Maybe not in the main Batbooks but in series that were at least Bat adjacent. (A cameo in the World's Finest Miniseries, a role in a JLA 80 page giant around that time... and right after this book hit the stands, he did a stint in the Suicide Squad.
Displaying 1 of 1 review