Interesting blog on Superhero rpgs and what matters in them.

http://www.petermball.com/13-things-learned-about-superhero-games-after-running-30-sessions-of-mutants-and-masterminds/

Ooh, bookmarked!

Lots of good stuff there, both in the main post and the follow-up.  I especially like the emphasis on the campaign pitch, and making sure all of the players are on the same page.

I generally agree with all these points except one minor quibble - Tossing out mechanics. I think this is much more germane to using M&M because of its 3e DNA. Lighter systems don't require this nearly as much as M&M (which is a lot lighter than standard 3e... but still has a lot of crunch n' munch).

And this comes from the fact that 3e wasn't inherently designed to do supers, but GR did a pretty bangup job of making that leap. But it still has so much overhead that for genre emulation there's far better systems to do it with and have "better" results that underpin a lot of his other points (like faster play, social interplay etc.)

5, 8, 11, 12, and 13 are just issues with the game rules he chose to use.

Other than that, mostly blindingly obvious stuff but good advice to anyone who has never run a super hero game or has tried and failed due to poor understanding of what works and what doesn't.

As someone who runs M&M every Sunday (except when someone else wants to run), most of these I've internalized already.  But I'm not perfect and I personally need to work on 2 and 8.  I've never run into 12, as my players are amazingly creative (thank freaking God, I dunno what I'd do without them...) and I'm willing to bump up effects to make it happen.  As for 13...  Not if you enjoy it, and I LOVE superheroes, and the games.  Hell, a hobby within the hobby is to collect any superhero game, just so I can steal stuff or just read...

But the key element that's different between a typical wandering adventure based Fantasy Game and even a world romping Super's game is 2.  You need a LOT of minutiae.  And you need to be willing to make more, sometimes on the spot too.

I was agreeing with the first 10 points, sometimes with an added "that's how you do games, period". But then we got to the last 3 points.

Quote11) FIGHTS ARE FAST

Such an important part of the comics themselves, but we do so little of it in the campaign. Or, rather, it takes up so much less time compared to other RPGs. If you're used to the D&D gaming paradigm where you can fit, more or less, one fight-scene per hour into a session, Mutants and Masterminds streamlines the art of the smackdown. This is a huge conceptual leap to overcome when you make the shift from running D&D to Supers, since it means you need to start adapting to a game-style where a fight against the epic big-bad will be over inside of half an hour.

That's the second thing I hear that makes me interested in seeing M&M in action.

Quote12) FIGHTS ARE ALSO KINDA DULL

There is an art to running an engaging superhero battle. Personally, I've not learnt it yet, although I'm slowly getting better. My approach to running combat has been increasingly dominated by years of playing D&D, which has been escalating the level of tactical complexity in recent editions. Comparatively speaking, M&M combat is much simpler, especially in one-on-one confrontations – the players will pretty much adopt the same tactic every fight and whittle away the bad guys defenses.

I've got this flagged as one of the things to try and fix when we resume playing in a couple of weeks. In some respects its my fault – a lot of the bad guys are just as stand-there-and-slug-it-out as the players, so it's not like there's a lot of incentive to get creative with the battle rules.

...and there went my interest;).
Though I assume it would be easy to add a rule for "getting creative", like the Fighter Stunt from Crimson Blades or the likes.

Quote13) SUPERS  GAMES ARE HARD WORK

I work harder to make a typical M&M game work than pretty much any other set of RPG rules I've ever run, although it's probably on par with running Feng Shui.

Wait, someone finds Feng Shui "lots of work" to run? Seriously:D?

I find Feng Shui to be less work than M&M and M&M, outside of character generation, is pretty darn simple.

Heh.  According to the follow-up blog entry, the author and his group switched from M&M 3E to Marvel Heroic.

Since DC Heroes is no longer available, I would have recommended Villains & Vigilantes, but the crunch of the new V&V 3.0 is about comparable to the crunch of M&M 3E.  Steve Kenson (the author of M&M and ICONS), recommended Bulletproof Blues for those that want a lighter super-hero RPG than M&M 3E, but I've never played it.  I do know that a third edition of Bulletproof Blues is in the works as well though.

yeah I didn't want to derail the thread talking about other systems. I like M&M, but ultimately I want something that's lighter in my Supers RPGs. I find M&M tends to get in the way of my gaming.

Ironic Kenson recommends something other than ICONS - ICONS is *pretty* lite and it's damn good.

IIRC, Steve Kenson's recommendation of Bulletproof Blues was for those that didn't like the random character generation of ICONS (this was a couple of years ago), but wanted something lighter than M&M 3E.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1018335I find Feng Shui to be less work than M&M and M&M, outside of character generation, is pretty darn simple.

Yes, me too.

Quote from: AsenRG;1018330Wait, someone finds Feng Shui "lots of work" to run? Seriously:D?

I can see it. Systematically, it's simple, but its sort of formulaic. Things can get to feel a bit samey if you aren't striving to inject fresh awesome.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;1018597I can see it. Systematically, it's simple, but its sort of formulaic. Things can get to feel a bit samey if you aren't striving to inject fresh awesome.

...Nope, sorry, still can't see it. And you don't need to stick to the "formula" parts;)!

Quote from: AsenRG;1018816...Nope, sorry, still can't see it. And you don't need to stick to the "formula" parts;)!

Sure, but going beyond the formula that the system natively supports is work.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;1018914Sure, but going beyond the formula that the system natively supports is work.

Not if you've ever GMed systems that don't rely on formula:).