The second Watchmen module for the DC Heroes role playing game was also developed before the comic series was finished. This module's author, Ray Winniger, says he spent hours on the phone with Alan Moore, discussing the plot of the soon-to-be published issues. Moore is also given credit in this module for contributing "special design assistance and concepts." Perhaps this is why Taking Out the Trash: Curses and Tears feels even more like a Watchmen story than Who Watches the Watchmen. Unfortunately, I don't think this is as strong an adventure as its predecessor.
Part of this module's problem was not Winneger's fault. His work was heavily edited, with some pages printed out of order and every reference to a real world place or person was removed. This was especially problematic for Richard Nixon, who was known only as the Vice President in this story about the Republican nomination for president. It frankly makes the text nearly unreadable at parts.
The other problems of this module lie squarely with Winnegar, though. He tried really hard to mimic Moore's writing style and presentation, but it just didn't quite work. Winnegar sprinkled the text with quotations from William Blake's poem "London," and he even tried writing some passages from Rorschach's journal. This created a rather cheesy effect, especially since Winnegar's prose is nowhere near on the level of Moore's. Granted, it is nearly impossible to get into the mind of a younger Rorschach, one described as "not nearly as unstable or schizophrenic as he will one day become." And since Moore never really explored this era of Rorschach's life, Winnegar had nothing to build on. It was a noble effort, I suppose, but not executed too well.
Anyway, the story features Moloch working with a corrupt presidential candidate. Oddly, the adventure is largely split up between a solo mission for the Comedian and a mission for Rorschach and Nite Owl. Silk Spectre and Ozymandias can be awkwardly shoehorned in if you have more than three players at the table, but there's no compelling narrative reason for them to be there. And, as was expected, Winniger issues strong warnings about using Doctor Manhattan. He simply does not work for games like this.
Dave Gibbons did not provide any new art for this module, so we're stuck with images pulled from the comics and promotional materials. Some of the supplemental material looks fairly nice — like actual letters and newspaper clippings, for example — but all the maps are extremely rudimentary. The most interesting part, by far, was the section on the Minutemen. Winnegar came up with stats for all their characters and pulled from the backup pages of Watchmen to provide short bios on each of them. Truthfully, I think a role-playing module based on the Minutemen would be a lot more interesting (and functional). Sadly, DC never published one, but they did provide the tools for any ambitious game master out there.
As far as an adaptation of Watchmen goes, this module suffers from the same limitations of the first one. None of the Watchmen characters are likable. But if you want players to play them, then you need to clean them up a bit. This forces the game to take place in an unexplored setting, almost entirely separate from the source material. And every character description carries notes about how this adventure takes place before they became too violent or too insane or began a plot to reshape the entire world. It all leaves a rather awkward and unsatisfying taste in your mouth, despite Winniger's (and Moore's) best efforts to make this feel like a Watchmen story. From what I can tell, neither one of these modules were particularly well received.
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