Super-Vision #2: The GenCon Report

I'm happy to report Green Ronin had an excellent time at the GenCon Game Fair in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a pleasure to see so many Mutants & Masterminds fans dropping by the booth and at our various demos and seminars, and to meet folks from our forums in person. We sold out of the advance copies of Foes of Freedom we brought along to the show, as well as the revised core rulebook, and sales were brisk on other M&M products as well. We brought a supply of Cosmo plushies along, and they all found new homes by Sunday! (We should have expected they would just "disappear.")

One highlight of the show was the EN World Awards (or "ENnies") where Green Ronin swept many of the categories to bring home a phenomenal eight gold and three silver awards! Among the honors were awards for Crooks! (Best Setting and Best Monster Supplement) and Nocturnals (Best Licensed Product and Best Graphic Design), as well as the coveted Best Publisher award. Thanks to all of our fans who voted in the awards!

Secrets of the Masterminds

This year at GenCon we had our first Mutants & Masterminds seminars, including a look at what's coming up on the M&M publication schedule and a seminar of questions and answers for players and GMs alike.

Coming Attractions

For those of you unable to attend our GenCon preview seminar, here's a look at what's coming up for M&M over the next several months:

In November, we have the Noir sourcebook, by Christopher ("Time of Crisis") McGlothlin. I described it to folks at GenCon as "The Maltese Falcon with super-powers," but it's really an in-depth look at the film noir genre for roleplaying, with a particular focus on running noir-style games of Mutants & Masterminds (with or without powers, as you prefer). The book takes a close look at the style and conventions of film noir and provides new character creation options, including a wealth and reputation system. It offers a detailed look at the noir city, usable on its own or with the setting of your choice, and provides plenty of nefarious characters to use in your own adventures. It includes notes for running a noir Freedom City and four characters from the shadowy past of Arcadia (in the Meta-4 setting), including Mister Mystery!

In the new year, we've got Gimmick's Guide to Gadgets, by well-known d20 author Mike Mearls. This is a comprehensive sourcebook to gadgets and technology in M&M, along with scads of sample gadgets, complete with game stats and ready for you to use in your games. The Guide covers all sorts of technology, including vehicles, robots, cybernetics, and more!

Then, in March, comes Super-Max, by Lucien Soulban (developer of Orpheus for White Wolf, among many other credits). It's a sourcebook on a federal prison designed to house super-powered inmates, what goes on there, and in the nearby town that supports the prison and in turn is dependent on it for its economy. The setting is described so you can use it in conjunction with any existing campaign setting, and it provides plenty of ideas and options. Learn about how prisons are run, how they have to adapt to deal with super-prisoners, and what sort of adventures and games you can base around them. You can use Super-Max to house the villains your heroes capture, or run a campaign where the players run the villains and learn what life is like "on the inside."

Finally, in May, there's the Mystic Manual, by yours truly. It's the guide to all things magical in Mutants & Masterminds, from expanded treatments of Sorcery and magical powers to mystic dimensions, magical creatures, enchanted items, mystic-focused campaigns, and more.

And that's just a sample of what we've got coming up for M&M! Lots more exciting projects are in the works, and we'll let you know about them just as soon as we can.

Masterminding Mutants & Masterminds

Our other GenCon seminar, "So You Want to Be a Mastermind?" focused on questions and answers about playing and running M&M. For the benefit of those unable to attend (and thanks to those of you who did), I'd like to note a few points that came up over the course of our discussion:

• M&M isn't your father's superhero RPG. Some GMs seem to run into trouble when they try to run M&M like other superhero games they're familiar with. Among other things, they discover that M&M combat runs fast (it's hard to build your 4-hour adventure around one fight). It may take a little time to get used to how M&M runs. Take this into account when planning your adventures.
• M&M has a degree of “absolute” abilities: it’s not hard to come up with an opponent invulnerable to the heroes’ attacks, for example. Fortunately, this is the case in comics all the time! One way to handle it is to encourage innovation. After all, in comic stories, heroes often encounter the villain, discover their powers/attacks are ineffective, then fall back and come up with a plan to deal with the villain. In my home game, a group of PL10 heroes went up against the Atomic Brain (with Protection +20!). They had to come up with a plan to dampen the villain’s internal nuclear reactions rather than trying to pound him into the dirt.
• Some folks noted minions are easy to take out. As it should be! If you want an opponent to be anything other than cannon fodder for the heroes, don’t make him a minion! Of course, you can have “tough” minions as plot devices: alien soldiers with invulnerable armor, undead minions immune to all but certain special attacks, and so forth. Under normal conditions, they’re unstoppable, find their weakness and they go down like tenpins.
• Extra effort is your friend. Don’t forget about the potential of extra effort, especially when it comes to power stunts. Encourage the players to use it to find new and innovative ways to overcome challenges, and don’t forget about the potential for villains to use it, too! A Villain Point spent for extra effort can turn an otherwise “harmless” villain into a sudden threat!

M&M Optional Rule: Extraordinary Effort

Extra effort and hero points allow characters to accomplish a lot. However, there are those times when even extra effort isn’t enough and extraordinary effort is called for. In these cases, you may wish to use the following option.

Once per adventure (more or less at the GM’s discretion) a player can decide to use extraordinary effort. The player may spend any or all of the character’s remaining hero points as well as up to three fatigue results (which renders a normal character unconscious). These can apply to any of their normal uses, and the benefits stack. So a hero who uses extraordinary effect, expending three hero points and suffering two fatigue results can apply five levels of extra effort to a task. The player cannot spend hero points (if there are any remaining) to offset the fatigue from extraordinary effort.

Superlink Spotlight: Omlevex

The trouble with our Superlink Spotlight feature is there are too many good M&M Superlink publishers for my poor, monthly column to keep up! That and there are Superlink products out there that have been waiting to have the spotlight shined on them for a while now.

This month, we turn the Superlink spotlight toward Omlevex, from Spectrum Games, published by Z-Man Games.

Omlevex starts with a fun premise: it’s a guide to a comic book universe that never existed, written as a combination “fan guide” and licensed roleplaying product. The background is so cleverly crafted, you’ll find yourself wondering sometimes if author Cynthia Celeste Miller has access to some parallel “Earth-2” of sorts where these comics really do exist. The conceit of the book makes it fun reading, especially for fans of the Silver Age of Marvel Comics, which clearly provided a lot of the inspiration for Omlevex.

The book describes the island of Metazon, home to diverse comic book settings and suitable for several campaigns before you begin to exhaust its supply of ideas. Metazon was created by an asteroid collision, which also deposited the rare mineral omlevex on Earth, leading to the origin of people with super-human powers. The set-up allows you to drop Metazon into a pre-existing campaign setting with very little work, or you can just set your game there and not worry about the outside world, except when Metazon’s menagerie of villains imperil it!

Omlevex describes plenty of heroes, villains, and supporting characters, including game stats for Mutants & Masterminds and other popular superhero RPGs. The characters are all filled with over-the-top Silver Age goodness, from the campy Man-Cactus to ultra-powerful Grunn, Bridger of a Thousand Worlds!

As I said when Omlevex first came to my attention: If you’re a fan of the Silver Age style, you owe it to yourself to check out this book.