Tell Me About M&M

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Okay, now how do I chime in when everyone else has said what needs to be said. Guess I'll have to get more specific on somethings:

The GM is what's limiting what you can be, not the system.
If you play a fantasy game with M&M and want to play a monster rather than a common race you don't have to do funny calculations and use LA, you can just build the traits off the character points you are given.

Your character's life experience/raw power level is not mechanically recorded.
No increments of experience/power like a level-based game such as D&D. Instead you can have grizzled veterans with lots of high-rating skills but no super-powers alongside greenhorns with blasts like artillery and it works.

Mechanics aren't tied to flavor.
Your "spine blast" and your "ice blast" don't have to have two different mechanical write-ups because you can represent them using the same game mechanics.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Your character's life experience/raw power level is not mechanically recorded.

Well, this isn't strictly true (at least not in M&M, I dunno about True20). You are limited by points, of course, and laid over top of that by "power level," which controls how much you can spend on powers, offense, and defense.

This is a good thing, IMO. The GM can give out power points, but not up the power level, and heroes broaden their abilities, rather than upping them. Or the DM can just up the power level as point totals rise. Or the GM can mix the two approaches however she likes.

This leads to another thing I like about the system: attack and defense is divorced from Strength and Dexterity, meaning you buy them separately. (It also means that Strength and Dexterity become more or less equal in worth to the other stats.) And, as mentioned, they are subject to power level caps. For example, at PL 10, you can have +10 to attack and +10 to damage, or +1 to attack and +19 to damage, or anything in between. Similarly, defense ("armor class") and Toughness (ability to absorb damage) are linked.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I can tell you that I own some of the books and can't get any of my group to play it.

 

[Treebore]

If only Marvel and DC knew something about the RPG industry and realized how awesome it would be for their fans if they were willing to cut GR a break on licensing fees. If GR is ever able to do a M&M Marvel or DC sourcebook, my supers gaming life would be complete.

With the fan write ups already available on Atomic Think Tank your already there. For both Marvel and DC, not to mention Dragonball Z and numerous other genre's.

 

[Treebore]

I can tell you that I own some of the books and can't get any of my group to play it.

Tis a shame, they are really missing out. Despite always being a big comic book fan I never liked previous "supers" RPG's, but I am now a big fan of M&M.

 

[Rechan]

Tell me about M&M

M&Ms are small colored candy the size of buttons. They come in packs with different flavors. Traditionally, there were only two options; milk chocolate covered in the colorful shell, and then a chocolate-covered peanut with a colored shell. Although there now exists several flavors, such as peanut butter, dark chocolate, and chocolate covered almonds.

 

[Rechan]

It should be worth noting that M&M can also be used in fantasy settings and for making fantasy characters. After all, Adventurers are superheros, the difference is they don't wear spandex or masks.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Tis a shame, they are really missing out. Despite always being a big comic book fan I never liked previous "supers" RPG's, but I am now a big fan of M&M.

We played DC Heroes rabidly for 12 years, and when the guy running that campaign "retired" from gaming after his divorce, our supers games ended. That was in 2000.

Part of the problem is we barely ever get to play anymore. And the general consensus is "well, let's just play D&D. That way we don't have to learn a new game we'll only play twice a year."

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Well, this isn't strictly true (at least not in M&M, I dunno about True20). You are limited by points, of course, and laid over top of that by "power level," which controls how much you can spend on powers, offense, and defense.

It more or less is:
Power Level 6 doesn't expect that you had to work your way through PL s 1-5 so it's more conceivable that you could simply start at that level.
And the game doesn't expect a character of level "Throwing Around Reality" to actually have any sort of ability that lets them throw reality around.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm going to play devil's advocate. I played Mutants and Masterminds and I really enjoyed it for all the reasons listed here. But I'm going to present the things I disliked, just so we get both sides of the coin.

1) Bruises and Injured levels never really feel like damage, and particularly with resilient bad guys, there can be a sense of blasting away and achieving very little.

2) Everyone needs to have the max level in any given power to be really competitive. If the PCs have a maxed out blaster, you need to give your villain a really high defense that corresponds with it or they go down very quickly.

Otherwise, great system. These two things are easily worked around or coped with anyway.