Super-Vision #5: Happy Birthday, M&M!
Welcome to the November installment of Super-Vision. This month marks the two-year anniversary of the publication of the World's Greatest Superhero Roleplaying Game. A lot has happened in those two years, so we're going to look a little at where M&M has been and where it is going.
The Secret Origin of Mutants & Masterminds
Mutants & Masterminds actually got its start in Freedom City, in many ways. In the late 1990s, I was commissioned to write a companion book to San Angelo: City of Heroes for Gold Rush Games. For various reasons, the project fell through and I was left with a half-finished manuscript for a superhero city setting.
Fan of superheroes that I am, I worked on the setting in my spare time as a personal project, with an eye toward using it as an at-home campaign setting. It grew considerably beyond the scope of the original project, with the addition of new heroes and villains and decades of its own history. It was a fun project, but I thought it would be even better if I could get the idea into print (keeping in mind that the superhero RPG market was virtually nonexistent at the time; all of the major superhero RPGs were out of print). I pitched the idea to some publishers of superhero RPGs, but they understandably had their own plans and declined, so it didn't seem likely my superhero city was going to have any visitors beyond my own gaming group.
Then I happened to mention the manuscript to Chris Pramas, President of Green Ronin Publishing. He asked to take a look and made me an offer: if I would design a superhero RPG using the new Open Game License and the d20 System, Green Ronin would publish two books: a core rulebook and the Freedom City campaign setting. From there, we'd see how they did.
"A d20 superhero game?" I said. I was, frankly, dubious. At the time, d20 hadn't been applied to much of anything beyond traditional fantasy (at least, not well). There was no Spycraft, no d20 Modern. Taking the d20 System and applying it to a completely different genre was a bold step, not without its risks. Still, I thought about it, and the more I thought about it, the more ideas came to me. The core d20 System is quite sound, and can be extended to cover any number of genres. Still, with the power levels available to most superheroes, players were going to need to roll a lot of damage dice, and I was concerned about the effect that would have on the flow of the game.
Then I wondered: what if we treated damage like all of the other harmful and dangerous effects in d20 and gave it a saving throw? It used an existing game mechanic in a somewhat familiar way, and it also eliminated about 80% of the need for other polyhedral dice. After that, it was pretty easy to drop the other 20%, so you could play the game (which, as yet, didn't have the name Mutants & Masterminds) with just a twenty-sided die.
I proposed the idea to Chris. He could have asked me to stick with hit points and damage dice, to focus on compatibility with the existing d20 System material. Instead, he gave me the go-ahead to start working on what became the Mutants & Masterminds damage save system, with hit points as an optional rule for the game.
As M&M developed, it became more and more clear that it departed enough from the d20 "standard" (at least so far as the Player's Handbook was concerned) that it made more sense to release the game under the Open Game License rather than the d20 Trademark License. It meant dropping the d20 logo from the game, but in return, it allowed us to include everything you need to play in the same book, making M&M a complete game (and the second OGL game, after Swords & Sorcery's EverQuest).
So Mutants & Masterminds finally debuted, followed a few months later by Freedom City and ... wow! To say we underestimated the positive response would be something of an understatement. So we quickly set to work on other M&Mproducts: Time of Crisis, followed by Crooks! from Super Unicorn (the design studio responsible for the look and feel of the M&Mline). In no time at all, Green Ronin had a full-fledged game line, and M&Mdeveloped a great community of creative, loyal fans active on our Atomic Think Tank message forums.
The past two years have seen some great stuff for Mutants & Masterminds: from Freedom City and Crooks! to the award-winning Nocturnals, the launch of our Superlink program, and the establishment of M&Mas a major game line for Green Ronin. Trust me when I say that we've got some great things lined up for the game in the years to come to keep Mutants & Masterminds the World's Greatest Superhero RPG!
Product Update
Speaking of things coming up, here's how the upcoming product schedule looks:
Noir is off to print, with a great cover by Eric Wight, depicting Mr. Mystery confronting La Bete Noire, with the Revenant and the mysterious Lady Anaka in the background.
Gimmick's Guide to Gadgets is moving on to layout. It's filled with lots of new gadgets and toys, along with new and expanded rules for constructs, tech-levels, gadget-related powers, and more.
Lockdown has finished up playtesting and will soon be going to editing. Playtester response to the sourcebook presenting a complete super-prison for use in any campaign setting was very positive, and we appreciate all the help in catching any errors.
Masterminding: "I Have You Now!"
Villains in the comics love to hear themselves talk: about their own greatness, the brilliance of their master plan, how the heroes can never succeed, and blah, blah, blah. Heroes can (and often do) take advantage of this tendency to "monologue" (as they call it in The Incredibles). Now, so can you, with this optional rule:
Gloating: A hero can make a Bluff skill check against the result of a villain's Sense Motive check to encourage the villain to waste time gloating, giving the hero an opportunity to do something. If the hero succeeds, the villain begins gloating and nothing else, focusing solely on talking about his tremendous power, his marvelous plans, and so forth. Each round, make a new skill check for the villain, if it fails, the villain goes on gloating. A villain with the appropriate Quirk—such as Overconfident or Megalomania—suffers a –5 penalty on the check. While the villain is gloating, the heroes can take actions normally. Generally, any attack or other action from the hero directly affecting the villain automatically ends the villain's gloating. Among other things, getting a villain gloating counts as a distraction sufficient to use Hide even when being directly observed. Players can (and often should) spend Hero Points on the Bluff check to encourage villains to gloat.
Superlink Spotlight: Ronin Arts
This month's Superlink Spotlight focuses on Ronin Arts, the #1 publisher of PDF products on RPGNow. Although Ronin Arts is best known for PDF products for d20 fantasy and modern games, company President and graphic designer Phil Reed has also ventured into the M&M Superlink field with several fine products for M&Mplayers and Gamemasters alike.
Ronin Arts' first Superlink product was the adventure A Matter of Family by Chris Aylott (award-winning author of Dynasties & Demagogues for Atlas Games). It's an adventure involving organized crime, super-criminals, and secrets, presenting heroes with some difficult choices.
Ronin Arts' Superline series of Gamemaster aids includes the Campaign Planner. It makes a great GM companion to our M&M Character Record Folio, giving GMs forms to track all the various information they need to have at their fingertips in a campaign. Meanwhile, A Fistful of Plot Devices offers Gamemasters a number of fleshed-out adventure ideas, with many different options and possibilities.
Most recently, Ronin Arts has introduced the Alien Invasion series. Each PDF presents a new alien race for use in M&M games, either as adversaries, allies, or even player characters! Each write-up comes with adventure hooks and several sample alien archetypes, allowing you to use them in your game right away!
All of these and more Ronin Arts products are available for purchase and download at RPGNow.
