Pulp Game using M&M?

[Retro-Rocket]

I really want to run a 30's Pulp style game in the vein of Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, G-Men, Sky Captain, etc. I have come up with the idea of using the Mutants and Masterminds rules with low power level characters (PL 3). I think this would be a great system to run a free wheeling plup adventure in. Characters would basically be normal but excepitional people. Low level super powers that would fit in the genre would be fine, hypnotism and the like. I would use the 3-1 skill buy system.

Any suggestions on if the rules and the power level would work for the type of game. And if you could, build some characters using PL 3 and 3-1 skill buy. To see if they could work. While I want characters to stay in the PL 3 range, I would not mind some slight (1 or 2 levels) varients in a few powers or skills.

 

[DanMcS]

PL 3 is really too low, I think. The max bonus they can have on any roll (like a save) is +3 from a power, +1 from a stat (stats are capped at PL +10), and +2 from a feat, meaning that the bonus is far overwhelmed by the d20 roll itself. MnM works well at PL 10 because there the modifiers are as important as the rolls- when you're saving versus damage at +15 or so, that puts a floor on how poorly you can do. I'd say at PL 3 you're going to have a lot of one-hit knockouts, particularly if the enemies are a little more powerful than the PCs.

When we've run lower-powered games in the past, the lowest we've gone is PL 6. Another thing you can do to encourage varied, low-power abilities is to give out points like a PL 8 or 10 character, but cap power stacking as though they're PL 6.

 

[takyris]

I agree with DanMCS. I'd try PL5 or PL6, or use PL10 but with 6 as the power cap, encouraging people to be less focus-powered but more flexible by having more abilities.

For a quick example, let's try "Dirk Lancer versus the Nazi Rocket-Women from Space!"

My Heroes:
Dirk Lancer: Captain of HERO-Force. An iron-jawed American hero who never gives up, never gives in, and always survives to save the day, keeping his team going through grit and determination.

How we make him: Saves, a few ranks in Strike, a Gun, and then the big powers -- Luck and/or Boost, both of which he takes Extras on to affect his allies as well as himself. Basically, when our hero calls out, "HERO-Force, assemble!", his team-mates know that it's time to beat the bad guys.

Virginia Dare: Exotic scarlet-tressed daughter of British aristocracy trained by the ancient masters of the East in the ways of the ninja. Cool and deadly, she declares that no man will ever make her decisions for her... but she'll follow Dirk Lancer to the ends of the world...

How we make her: Super-Dex or Super-Speed, Strike, and some movement power -- a combination of Leaping and Clinging, possibly. Not 10 ranks -- she can't leap to the top of a building, but she can casually do that "back and forth between the walls" thing up twenty feet or so, and she can climb walls in ways that make Dirk Lancer just shake his head and laugh at her audacity.

Rex Archer: Cynical and quiet, the team's ace sharpshooter and rocket-boosted master of the skies has suffered losses in his life. He may never open his heart to a woman again, but Dirk Lancer gives him something to fight for.

How we make him: High BAB and power stunts on his weapon power (so that he can shoot a nearby awning rope to Snare someone, or shoot an oil tank to make oil spray out and Slick the area nearby). Add in Flight for his rocket-pack.

Ol' Doc: Hypnotized by a yogi and taught the mysteries of the mind, Ol' Doc can patch up folks who are hurt, and he's been a vital asset when the team was attacked by evil nazi dolphins whose sonar had been amplified by Hitler's insidious mind-control rays.

How we make him: A little Healing. Super-Wisdom. Mind-Control (to a limited degree) and possibly something like Invisibility (modified to take a Will save to negate it and flaw it so that it doesn't work on machines -- like the Shadow, he's blanking himself out of people's minds). For emergencies, a Mental Blast, possibly flawed so that it only works against people who have and are currently using mental attack powers.

Little Timmy Lancer: Dirk's irrepressible nephew often tags along on the team's adventures. Initially, he just got rescued a lot, but when Doctor Muhrdehr's intellect-enhancing radiation struck Timmy, the young lad became a brilliant scientist, able to disable a death ray or make an anti-Martian gas with nothing more than soda pop, a bottle of aspirin, and a little baking powder.

How we make him: Super-Intelligence, Gadgets. And have him say "Golly!" a lot.

My Villains:
Amazonia, the Nazi Rocket Woman from Space: Her spaceships brought her to Earth in search of men to take as slaves in order to further her people. Hitler's promise of the super-man enticed her to trade rocket-packs and ray guns for the promise of proud Aryan male volunteers once the world was conquered. If she can be convinced of Hitler's evil ways, she might turn against him -- or perhaps the heroism of Dirk Lancer will simply make her realize that the super-man already exists...

How we make her: Oh, man, we go all out. She's got a Force Field/Energy Field. She's got Energy Blasts that can also Snare people. She's probably got Strike, too, or possibly a giant rod that is surrounded by a field of energy. And we give her some good saves, so that one lucky hit doesn't knock her flat on her sequin-bikini'd butt.

Colonel Von Drech: The foul-minded Nazi warleader and mad scientist who accompanies Amazonia, fooling her with his insidious lies. Amazonia's people are still vulnerable to mind-control, and Von Drech is wearing one of Tesla's artifacts, an electrical ring that lets his voice bypass the conscious brain and directly manipulate the mind of the listener.

How we make him: Strong and tough, but no more so than Dirk Lancer, and ideally about one PL lower. A few ranks in Gadgets, since he's a mad scientist. His Tesla ring is Mind Control with the Subtle Extra, so that nobody can detect it happening, and with the Area extra as well.

Flying ray-gun-wielding stormtroopers: These Nazi fighters are the cream of the crop, trained to use Amazonia's new technologies. If Dirk Lancer and HERO-Force don't get past them to Colonel Von Drech and Amazonia, our schoolchildren will be saluting these folks instead of the flag!

How we make them: PL3 Minions with high Str, Dex, and Con, so they don't necessarily die just from one hit. (I'm thinking 16, 16, 16, not 20, 20, 20). They get Flight and Weapon (for the ray gun), and that's about it. If they ever roll a 1 on an attack, it means their ray gun has exploded. If they ever roll a 1 on a damage save, it means their rocket-pack has exploded. A critical hit from the heroes means the same thing.

General Nazi Rocket-Women from Space: PL2, with Rocket and Jet packs as well as a light Force Field or something. But really, most of the Nazi Rocket Women don't fight. They somehow instinctively understand that their queen is doing something wrong, and when they see the strong and handsome members of HERO-Force, they'll probably want to help by leading them secretly to Amazonia's chambers.

Take that, add a catchphrase like:

Dirk: HERO Force, assemble! Honor!
Virginia: Equality!
Rex: Respect!
Doc: Order!
Timmy: And I'm Timmy!

And you're golden. Pulp-away, M&M-style!

 

[Retro-Rocket]

takyris,
Brilliant, totally brilliant!

 

[takyris]

Well, you know, slow day at work.

From what I've seen ruleswise, the biggest problem with PL3 is that people have very little room to get knocked about or stunned before they're unconscious. In general, PLs map pretty well to hit points in terms of "rounds you can take punishment from a bad guy before you're out of the fight". In practice, the removal of hit points makes things less granular, increasing the randomness. This means that a PL3 heroic person can very easily be unconscious after the first punch from a mook if they roll badly, which doesn't usually fly well with the players.

If you've got the time, you can make max'd out PL6 or carefully non-max'd PL10 folks who will have a great time against the mooks without forgetting that they're not superheroes. Really, just getting rid of Protection and Armor does that. Amazing Saveamage is a must (Or Amazing Save:Reflex and Evasion, which is great for folks like Virginia, who can take out tons of mooks but then get clocked by a single punch she didn't see coming), but if you keep it reasonable, in the +5 to +7 range, you get people staying up and on their feet but taking hits, which increases the tension. (A hero who never gets hit is boring. A hero who's unconscious after one hit is boring. A hero who keeps fighting with a bloody slash on his arm or cinematically attractive blood trickling from his cheek is coooooool.)

The one thing I wouldn't allow is for players to make their own PCs, unless you're comfortable saying "No" over and over again. People will want to have Strike with more ranks of damage than the ray gun or max'd out BAB and BDB, and other fun stuff along those lines. In this kind of game, balance is even more important than in a normal M&M game, because you're not allowing everything -- you're trying to get something that has just the right flavor.

Good luck, in any event. And please tell us how it goes! I'm running a musketeer-ish fantasy M&M game now, so flavor-modification is something I'm into in a big way.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

You could also hold out a few weeks for Noir from Green Ronin.

 

[Retro-Rocket]

Well, you know, slow day at work.

From what I've seen ruleswise, the biggest problem with PL3 is that people have very little room to get knocked about or stunned before they're unconscious. In general, PLs map pretty well to hit points in terms of "rounds you can take punishment from a bad guy before you're out of the fight". In practice, the removal of hit points makes things less granular, increasing the randomness. This means that a PL3 heroic person can very easily be unconscious after the first punch from a mook if they roll badly, which doesn't usually fly well with the players.

Good luck, in any event. And please tell us how it goes! I'm running a musketeer-ish fantasy M&M game now, so flavor-modification is something I'm into in a big way.

With my experience with M&M, hero and villain points are what save a character from the lucky knockout blow. If all things equal (both hero and villian are PL 10 and have pretty much matching attacks and defenses) every hit should have a roughly 25% chance of a knockout. I remember one game in which we meet a villain group and after their leader gave us his "your doomed" speech, he was promply hit and failed his damage save by more than 10. Use of one of his villain points only gave him a stunned result! I will have to build some PL 3 guys and do some mock fights to see how it works for such lower level PC's.

 

[Retro-Rocket]

PL 3 is really too low, I think. The max bonus they can have on any roll (like a save) is +3 from a power, +1 from a stat (stats are capped at PL +10), and +2 from a feat, meaning that the bonus is far overwhelmed by the d20 roll itself..

There are caps on stat bonuses due to PL? I don't remember that. I just though the max was +5 for a 20 Stat. I will have to double check my book.

Lets look at a tough boxer type.

Strength 20 for a +5, Strike +3 (boxing skills) for a damage bonus of +8.
Con of 20 for a +5, Amazing Save +3, and the Toughness feat +2 for a damage save of +10.

These are of coarse maximums for a PL 3 character. Said Boxer hits himself (no other feats are used). He has to make a damage save of 23 (15 + Damage bonus of +8) with a d20 + 10 roll. A roll of 2 or less knocks himself out, a roll of 3-7 gets a stunned result, 8-12 gets a bruised result (1 hit), and a 13 or better is unaffected.

Am I right in this? Maybe going with a damage save of 10 + the power level of the attack would work better for a pulp feel?

 

[takyris]

I don't remember the normal-ability-score bonuses being limited by PL, but then, I haven't played with any low-PL PCs, so I wouldn't remember that rule if it were true.

Your note about Hero Points/Villain Points is dead-on -- the "reroll and, if neither beats 10, take 10" is a great way for people to avoid that stuff. The caveat to this is that heroes using their Hero Points that way aren't using those Hero Points to do neat tricks, like using their Gadgets (if they have 'em) or using extra effort to gain a Power Stunt or Extra they don't normally have (eg, Dirk Lancer grabbing computer wires to have an Energy Blast for one round in order to electrocute Von Drech, bypassing his force field, which doesn't work against electrical attacks). That might not be a big deal, though, depending on how relaxed you're willing to be on that stuff.

If you do go the PL 3 route, you might consider also encouraging the Hero's Luck feat, since otherwise, folks will only have 2 hero points even when fresh and ready to go -- and my always-cautious players like to save a hero point for "Miraculously Not Killed".

With those in mind, I think that altering the damage save to 10+damage is a fast and simple fix that should work without trouble.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

We ran a fine Pulp M&M game. Everyone had a great time and there were few problems with the game system.

We started at PL 4 and by the time we wrapped it up we were half way through PL 6.

The PCs were:

Georgianna Spannermaster: Plucky, female monkey-wrench and all around vehicle master.
Eddison Newcastle: Millionaire playboy, with an amazing lucky streak.
Joe "Knuckles" Kowalski: Hero of the working man. A tough dockworker, with a knock-out punch.
Chamdar!: An eastern mystic with a hypnotic gaze and a pet cobra (sidekick).

For us the M&M rules worked great at PL4 (not sure I would want to got any lower though)...