I'm looking forward to the City of Heroes RPG.

But anyhow, Mutants and Masterminds is either the best or second best Supers game going out there (2nd best to MEGS, the old DC Heroes system- which was horribly treated by the Blood Of Heroes guys). I can get into why the Blood of Heroes interpretation ruined the brilliance of MEGs if anyone cares. Anyhow.

What I don't like about M&M is: it's got just a bit too much mental aerobics for me. You get hit, you have to roll dice and then mentally compare a margin of 10 or 15? I havent played since 1st Edition but I just ordered 2nd edition. Maybe there's been an improvement. I've had superheroes on my mind lately. We had a guy that shot out ice as a 'snare' type effect (like you covered a bad guy in ice up to his waist or something). When the ice-covered guy wanted to break out, he rolled to hit and then instead of doing the intuitive thing about damaging the ice or shaking it off, you had to roll a saving throw for the ice. That kept throwing me off. Also, characters basicly are static in M&M- you don't level up. But in general the system does work and it works well. So I would have looked forward to D20 Spectaculars.

What I want is a supers game with hit points, classes, and levelling. I can hear people scoff now, but that is exactly what the City of Heroes MMO has and it is insanely successful.  So thats what I want, except I want more powers than CoH has.

Quote from: Abyssal MawWhat I want is a supers game with hit points, classes, and levelling. I can hear people scoff now, but that is exactly what the City of Heroes MMO has and it is insanely successful.  So thats what I want, except I want more powers than CoH has.

I think d20 Silver Age Sentinals has that.

Quote from: Abyssal MawWhat I want is a supers game with hit points, classes, and levelling. I can hear people scoff now, but that is exactly what the City of Heroes MMO has and it is insanely successful.  So thats what I want, except I want more powers than CoH has.

There were 2 different D20 pdf products like that, I'm blanking on their names.  If it comes to me I'll post it.

Yeah, Silver Age Sentinels was level/class/hit points based. It's a good system, if a little complicated when you're first learning it.

Quote from: buzzI think it has more to do with WotC cutting back on d20M releases, though I'm not sure why Spectaculars got bumped and Dark * Matter didn't. I'd venture a guess that the latter is a) more unique and 2) more in keeping with the d20M line as a whole, but that's just me making shit up.

I'd venture a guess that a good deal of it is the Dark*Matter setting that's prebuilt and has some track record, so they have better setting development fluff book possibilities. Superheros? Not sure how many crunchie Powers books you could drag out of that, even setting aside that I personally wouldn't be interested in a supers game that didn't have a robust mechanism for rolling my own powers.

So rather than pay the piper for licensing someone else's setting, or trying to build their own cheesy knockoffs (are they really going to go toe-to-toe against DC/Marvel?) they just went with D*M.


EDIT: BTW isn't City of Heros getting licensed as a P&P? Who's doing that?


Plus M&M be some stiff competition in the 20-sider catagory.

I believe Eden Studios is doing the City of Heroes RPG. May be wrong.

Both DC and Marvel have picked stinkers for RPG rules-sets for the last decade or so, so I don't really see that as competition. The only version that was good was the Greg Gorden-designed DC Heroes RPG (and it was really really good).

To all the people who think that RPG's can't do Supers well, due to the 'necessity' of handling the soap opera dramatics...


WTF age did you start reading comics?  Did you NEVER read them and wish that you had the cool power.... I mean Kewl Powerz of Iron Man??? Or Superman? Nobody ever read a comic book and jumped off the bed wearing a bathtowel as a cape going 'I can fly'???

You want soap operas? Watch daytime Television. I hear Days of Our Lives is still going strong.  

Now... if you'll excuse me my roof is calling to me. Bathtowelman to the rescue!!!

Quote from: Abyssal MawAlso, characters basicly are static in M&M- you don't level up.

Hm, you can use hero points or whatever they are called to add to your powers, or buy new powers. One of the problems is that supers in the comics don't change that much - if you look at SPidey, there's been the black costume (which turned out to be at least 50% plot device) and this new armour thing I'm not sure of because I don't ready Spidey anymore. But really, the vital changes to the character have been the death of Gwen Stacey, leaving college, marrying MJ and all that.

The standard power escalation of level-based game doens't seem well suited to that sort of thing.  In a supers game you tend to START with the character you want, without much scope for the sort of change you see between a first and tenth level fighter in D&D, for example. In our M&M game, folks just added to their powers without changing things much (except one guy who wanted some new power, I forget what now, something to do with an amulet.. oh, that's right, he wanted to buy-off his disturbing visage and so we worked in this finding an occult amulet to the game plot - actually, that worked pretty well, but that guy is a very good player).

Ned

Quote from: SpikeTo all the people who think that RPG's can't do Supers well, due to the 'necessity' of handling the soap opera dramatics...


WTF age did you start reading comics?  Did you NEVER read them and wish that you had the cool power.... I mean Kewl Powerz of Iron Man??? Or Superman? Nobody ever read a comic book and jumped off the bed wearing a bathtowel as a cape going 'I can fly'???

You want soap operas? Watch daytime Television. I hear Days of Our Lives is still going strong.  

Now... if you'll excuse me my roof is calling to me. Bathtowelman to the rescue!!!

I'm just mystified by the attitude of needing MECHANICS for soap opera stuff.

QuoteThe standard power escalation of level-based game doens't seem well suited to that sort of thing.

CoH uses the food pellet reward of leveling. But generally, no a steep power curve doesn't really fit that well with traditional supers. Then again it doesn't really fit in the actual story of a lot of fantasy, certainly at a single book level although somewhat moreso across a large series of books.

I don't think it has to be, or should be dead flat though. Sure Superman was generally always amazingly kickass as an adult. But as a kid he was weak, in many ways because of lack of knowledge. I also think adding gear/goodies I think is a great way to handle change. That occult amulet is an excellent example of that. Or managing to build your own fortress of solitude. Uncovering and honing powers that you always had is another.

Quote from: GabrielI'm just mystified by the attitude of needing MECHANICS for soap opera stuff.

Indeed.

It's not the lack of mechanics for soap opera stuff, but the fact that any combat in M&M (and Champions was the same, IIRC) dominated a session. In our three-player groups major conflicts would last a couple of hours, at least. We had a few misjudged mook fights (mea culpa) which had the same problem.

And IIRC, Champions had a system where you rolled each session to see if one of your dependants or events in your secret identity cropped up - pretty much a mechanic for the soap opera bits.

Ned

I agree: There is a certain take on superheroes that calls for a soap opera treatment (certain eras of the X-Men and the Teen Titans definitely qualify as that type of comic). But there should also be room for so much more. 'Superhero soap opera' is a microgenre. There's also the 'Animated series', the super comedy (like Blue Devil), the crime type comic, the adventure type comic, the solo hero, the team-up comic, the 'team group' (like JSA), the 'magic' comic. .. superheroes are such a huge category and you really need to go as wide as possible.

We had the opposite problem with combats: one or two missed saves would typically knock an assailant out, so combats went very quickly. But I had some devious players. They had one guy who could 'warp' through plants and another guy who could super-disguise himself, so they'd spend half the session investigating where the bad guy was, and then the super disguise guy would show up at the bad guys door, delivering a gift plant. The rest of the team would then warp on top of the bad guy and the combat took about 5 minutes.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyIt's not the lack of mechanics for soap opera stuff, but the fact that any combat in M&M (and Champions was the same, IIRC) dominated a session. In our three-player groups major conflicts would last a couple of hours, at least. We had a few misjudged mook fights (mea culpa) which had the same problem.

And IIRC, Champions had a system where you rolled each session to see if one of your dependants or events in your secret identity cropped up - pretty much a mechanic for the soap opera bits.

Ned

Well, superhero comics tend to be about battles.

If you don't want sessions to be about battles, then tell the GM you'd like more role-playing oriented sessions.

Plus, how much time a combat takes in a given system depends on how familiar everyone is with it.  It sounds like the players need to get on the ball.  Yes, I ran some pretty slow Robotech fights early on when I didn't have my house rules to make the system playable, but now I can run battles with dozens of combatants with a reasonable amount of speed.

Quote from: SpikeIndeed.

Mechanics for soap opera?

Easy. Each player has a girlfriend (or boyfriend, but come on, who're you kidding? It's a superhero game, we'll just get sexually frustrated guys )
This is simulated by a printed picture, visible to everyone.
Now add beer and/or tequila.

After a few hours, Thunderbrawn will ogle Violet Vigilante's picture of Danni Ashe. Voila, the rest is left to good ol' inebriation.

I should become a Forge author.