Philippe – Always use your powers for Good. Steve Kenson Gen Con 2008
That’s what’s written in the inner cover of my copy of Mutants and Masterminds 2nd ED. I bought it at the Green Ronin booth on the last day at Gen Con last summer and when I saw that the author was behind the cash machine, I rushed to get him to sign it.
Geekout!
For most of the rest of summer and fall, the book rested on my ‘to read’ pile, along other books I obtained since then. Since I spent a lot of time and effort reading adventures and getting in the D&D 4e groove for our fall gaming season, that book was left mostly ignored.
A few weeks ago, needing some RPG distraction from our current game, I picked the M&M book up and started reading it. I’m not yet done reading it, having reached the Gamemastering section.
Up to that point in the book, I was having mixed feelings.
First of, I was really impressed of what had been achieved with the d20 rules. I would not have expected an apparently balanced point-buy system to be feasible within the framework of the that game engine. Yet it was done.
Secondly, the book is well written, has great art, and offers pretty much all the options one would expect from a Supers RPG. It feels like a Supers game whenever you pick the book and peer at a random page.
In fact, when you factor in all the options, feats and limitations that can affect each power there are a lot more packed in these pages than it appears. The combat section has all the options you would expect from a Supers game while at the same time having dropped Attacks of Opportunity and encouraging playing without a battlemap. Still there’s a lot of rules in there!
So much so that this is where the book kinda loses me. This is a late design d20 3.5 game with its complete toolbox approach to character creation and task resolution. While I was reading the section on combat I could imagine just how much I would have to go back to the rules and check powers, feats and special combat moves time and again.
I don’t currently want that in a game. I moved away from D&D 3.5 for a reason and reading M&M, while awesome in itself, reminds me why I moved away.
I’m a cyclic gamer (some would say I a weather vane) and while I’ve highly enjoyed playing d20 by the time 2008 rolled up, I was ready for something else.
However, what saved the game for me was how the first part of the GM’s chapter is crystal clear: “We’ve put all the crunchy bits of d20 because we had them around and you might enjoy them, but feel free to play with only these 4 rules… (all centered around the core d20 mechanic of ‘roll high against a target number).
So given that I’m still somewhat comfortable with the d20 system, I could totally see myself play a few one-shot adventures of M&M by ignoring preety much every thing I don’t like about the rules.
To that effect I’d play it thus:
- Premade characters, fluffed up by the players
- I’d use only premade guys from the Core Rules and the Campaign Setting (I also purchased Freedom City 2E a few weeks ago), I would not design bad guys.
- I’d ignore most feats on the bad guys unless I could ‘get’ them easily enough without lengthy page flipping.
- I’d use the 4 basic task resolution rules along with Hero Points and the combat Knockback rules (those are cool).
- The rest I’d probably make up on the spot!
You guys have any other tips to give me should I want to tackle this promising yet oh so crunchy game?
Yeah, M&M looked like a great system for me but the character generation killed me. For me if chargen (oh gawds i am using jargon) is not FUN then I don’t enjoy a system. i shall keep a watch and see about the advice you get.
It’s great that it exists for people who want to tackle Char Gen. You pretty much can do whatever character and that’s great. As Greywulf has demonstrated many times on his website (http://blog.microlite20.net/), you can emulate all styles and genres.
However, I for one don’t want to tackle it for the moment. Luckily for the GM, there’s a lot of pre-made stuff in the main book (as well as even more in the campaign book).
Nah. Never heard of it.
😀
Oh, ok then, as you insisted (and I know I’m teaching some serious egg sucking here)……………
1) First and foremost: In M&M, winging it is accepted (and encouraged) behaviour. It’s a book set in a trope-filled world where drama and action takes precedence over the correct interpretation of the rules. That’s a bit of a sea-change to D&D where entire forums are filled with people arguing over the exact meaning of every single darned word in every single sentence in the Core Rules.
2) The archetypes are a work of genius. Study them, bend them and use them as the basis of your own character ideas. About 50% of our characters start (and sometimes end) with an archetype from either the core books or Instant Superheroes.
3) Combat is different to D&D. Very, very different. It’s faster, more fluid, and the players (and Evils GMs!) are encouraged to use their abilities in imaginative and creative ways. Extra Effort and Hero Points = Action! Let that guy with Blast use Extra Effort to gain an Alternate Power at the last moment to create an area effect explosion to Save The Girl from the oncoming tidal wave, oh whatever. In M&M it’s about being creative with what you’ve got, not about ticking off the Powers as you use them in order.
4) There’s a lot of Powers. There’s a lot of Feats. Doesn’t mean you need to know ’em though. As GM, you only need to know the ones belonging to the Evil Villains, so keep them simple to start with. A Gang Leader and a bunch of Criminal Minions (pp 226-227) are staple foes, and barely a Feat (and no Powers) in sight.
5) M&M plays best when it’s not just a string of combat encounters one after the other. Like comicbooks themselves, a great adventure has the thrill of the chase, investigation, research, puzzles and more. Combat is just one part of the Superhero Experience. That said………..
6) Big, Big Battles are fantastic! When you’ve got characters who can teleport anywhere on Earth, fly 10,000mph, time travel and control dimensions with ne’er a thought, anything is possible. There’s a reason why M&M doesn’t use battlemats 😀
Any questions, just ask.
greywulfs last blog post..Love amid oncoming traffic
Me and some buddies put together a few Marvel Universe based heroes when we were in the Middle East last summer, and the character creation is fun and easy. I would simply sit down and fiddle with the character creation rules a little bit.
Also, I discovered something recently: Any feats that require an extensive amount of flipping pages should instead be made into a “power-like” card, requiring no more flipping, and making it feel more like a 4e game.
Dice Monkeys last blog post..So you mean that’s what I was fighting? hmmmm….
I’ve been considering a superhero one-shot or so recently, and this sounds like a capable system. My group certainly knows how the d20 system works by and large, and finding a superhero genre ruleset that fits that paradigm works well.
Thanks for mentioning it! Maybe it will be useful.
Davids last blog post..<a href=”http://theverbingnoun.blogspot.com/2008/12/rpg-carnival-transform
Sorry for my relative silence. Work is hell and I’ve much on the proverbial plate.
Thanks Greywulf for your tips, I will apply them when I do play.
I still love the d20 system (hell 4e still is d20) I just don’t want to deal with all its crunchy bits anymore. At Gen Con i ran it crazy fast and I loved it. I want some more of that.
A couple of suggestions for if you do ever wanna tackle character generation in M&M: I tended to like setting the campaign level at 2X the starting character level, so characters could really excel in something if they chose to, but they’d have to make concessions to do it.
Also, if you wanna do the old school random thing, I’d suggest using Palladium’s “Heroes Unlimited” for all the crazy randomized tables, and then stat the characters out in M&M.
(Heroes Unlimited was the first supers themed system I played, and aside from the randomizing, boy what a haphazard system. When I finally got talked into switching to Mutants & Masterminds, it was like being handed a flamethrower after trying to start a fire with two sticks…)
Heroes Unlimited. I remember making characters for it… and possibly fighting Robotech Mecha with them…
Ah the 80’s!
Welcome to the Blog BTW BigFella!
Thank you kindly, ChattyDM. First time caller, long time listener…
Yeah, I got into Heroes Unlimited via Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. S’funny you bring up mecha, ‘cos that was one of the BIG problems with HU. Balance. (Especially for the robots.)
I struggled thru a campaign where one player was a relatively normal guy who could turn invisible, and another was essentially a giant robot with a built in .50 cal machine gun and ion cannon. Try coming up with villians that challenge both at once. Feh…
But I digress. It’s M&M from here on out for all my superhero needs. I look forward to reading more about how it goes, should you get anything going. Might inspire me to dust off my own M&M campaign and get it rolling again…