Are you a fan of Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin Publishing? They’ve launched a Patreon to continue the production of great M&M products. Patreon is an excellent tool as EN Publishing has several Patreons (EN5ider, EN World, Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, and E.O.S.) that help fund the many projects Morrus crafts. Green Ronin going the same route proves the importance of Patreons to the financial health of RPGs. Joining me are Crystal Frasier and Steve Kenson to talk about the Mutants & Masterminds Patreon.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Crystal, Steve, thank you for taking the time to discuss Green Ronin Publishing’s Patreon for Mutants & Masterminds. For those that have not played M&M before, can you tell us a bit about the setting and system?
CRYSTAL FRASIER (CRYSTAL): Mutants & Masterminds at its core is a “roll a d20 and add your bonus” style game that adds a lot of elements from storytelling games so players have more freedom to use their abilities in creative ways or even add elements to the story. The game is presented without setting in the core book, but we spend a lot of time fleshing out Earth-Prime, which pays some homage to our favorite comic book characters and storylines while adding a lot of “four-color modern” flavor.
STEVE KENSON (STEVE): In brief, Mutants & Masterminds is a d20-based system built around the d20 + modifier vs. a difficulty class system familiar to players of D&D and other d20-based games. It has developed considerably since it’s D&D 3rd Edition based roots. Although there’s considerable content for Earth-Prime, the setting Green Ronin has been supporting since the first edition of Freedom City, M&M itself is a “setting agnostic” game system, suitable for all kinds of super-powered settings.
EGG: This isn’t the “standard” Patreon, it’s an official Green Ronin Publishing endeavor. What advantages does Green Ronin see for M&M with this service?
CRYSTAL: Printing physical books is becoming increasingly difficult and is a slow process, so we can’t deliver new M&M content as often as we or the fans would like, and it unfortunately means a lot of older content can’t get the attention it deserves. Patreon gives us the option to release small bits of content at a time in a platform where we can easily hear about what fans want and deliver exactly that, or work on small projects that don’t have an obvious place in the normal print release schedule. Case in point: Our fans on M&M Monday told us they were craving more villains, so the first series of releases for the Patreon are villains!
STEVE: The pandemic has affected how we deliver content to our fans. Patreon both provides Green Ronin with another venue to provide Mutants & Masterminds fans with content for the game, and another kind of content we can deliver. In particular, Patreon lets us tackle smaller projects that don’t necessarily fit into a larger product.
EGG: What edition of M&M will the content available through this crowdfunding platform support?
CRYSTAL: The material will all be for 3rd edition, with a big focus on updating material from previous editions to the current one. We’re hoping to also tinker with some optional rules ideas that, again, don’t have an obvious place in our print books, and that might include updating rules and feats from older editions to 3rd edition.
STEVE: Although the M&M Patreon will focus on 3rd edition content, one of those aforementioned smaller projects is updating some earlier edition content to 3rd edition, so there will definitely be things for fans of “classic” M&M products!
EGG: You offer several backer levels. What does the “Sidekick” level offer to backers?
STEVE: I like to think of “Sidekick” as the “core” backer level. It gets patrons pretty much all of the actual content we release through the Patreon.
CRYSTAL: Like Steve said, “Sidekick” is the presumed default for most of our backers. At the current release schedule that gets you one character PDF a week for the same price you’d pay for a single Rogues Gallery or Threat Report installment. As the Patreon grows and we can dedicate more time to it, however, that value grows because you’ll start getting access to new setting material and eventually twice as many villains.
EGG: What do you get at the highest level, “Prime”?
CRYSTAL: “Prime” is the level that gives dedicated fans some personal investment in Mutants & Masterminds. At that level you can participate in developer chats to get answers to your burning setting and rules questions and ask for advice, and you also get name-dropped into the Earth-Prime setting, preserving you as a part of superhero posterity.
STEVE: The “Hero” and “Prime” tiers are more interactive, for really engaged fans, offering things like voting on upcoming projects, interacting with us through development chats or live-streams, and chances to even get name-dropped in new M&M content!
EGG: Like many crowdfunding projects, this one has stretch goals. When these are unlocked, what will they offer to the backers?
STEVE: The Patreon doesn’t have “stretch goals” so much as it has just regular old goals, or what we might call “benchmarks” that represent a point at which we can devote more time and resources to producing content through the Patreon. As the Patreon has more support, it “levels up” and can offer more to all of the patrons in terms of content. It’s a win-win.
CRYSTAL: The benchmarks basically tell us when people are interested enough in this weird side material that we can start dedicating more time and resources to it. The first benchmark is generating some new content; basically every month both Steve and I will do a short blog-style entry describing something in detail in Earth-Prime, like discussing a specific store or urban legend or organization. Later benchmarks will unlock even more content for the same price.
EGG: Those are cool offers. This Patreon focuses on updating existing content. Will this content be made available to non-Patreon backers somewhere else?
STEVE: I think the only exclusivity we can promise patrons is that they will see content on the Patreon first. That said, since a number of Patreon projects are things we wouldn’t have done or released as stand-alones, there’s a good chance they’ll remain Patreon “exclusive” until we find another venue suited to release them, such as an updated edition of a sourcebook or the like. We are… weren’t not great at long-term planning. That’s why we’re not villains.
CRYSTAL: The plan is for this material to be available for exclusively to patrons for the time being. A later benchmark will open the basic statblock material for everyone, and I’m not going to rule out the idea of putting together print “M&M Annuals” from Patreon material or something similar, but hopefully if we do something like that we’ll include a special nod to our patrons to let them know their faith in us is appreciated.
EGG: Beyond the Patreon, what other 2021 M&M content can fans expect from Green Ronin?
CRYSTAL: 2021 is finally going to get the print edition of Danger Zones ready for everyone, with expanded material beyond the individual PDFs, and we’ll be continuing the Astonishing Adventures line with new material to get GMs and players busy. We’re hopefully also going to squeeze the Vigilante’s Handbook in with some Astonishing Adventure support. Just keep in mind that we’re just a pair of part-timers.
STEVE: The overall M&M schedule is Crystal’s bailiwick. I’m just looking forward to being involved in as many of those projects as time and scheduling allow!
EGG: What non-M&M projects are you working on for Green Ronin or for yourself?
CRYSTAL: I like to chip in on other Green Ronin lines when I can, especially AGE. I also have a few writing projects going outside the industry like the upcoming Love is a Battlefield anthology for DC Comics and an unnamed graphic novel from Oni Press. I also publish some of my own game tinkering and writing advice on my personal Patreon.
STEVE: I write for pretty much all of Green Ronin’s game lines to one degree or another, so I have various irons in the fire for AGE System projects for Blue Rose, Modern AGE, Fantasy AGE, or The Expanse, as well as Mutants & Masterminds. I also just launched another Patreon to support content for Icons Superpowered Roleplaying from my own Ad Infinitum Adventures imprint, letting me apply the notion of “short, monthly content from a grab-bag of diverse ideas” to that game as well. It’s at [my Patreon].
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans find this Patreon and follow your work?
CRYSTAL: The Patreon is [here]. You can follow me most easily on Twitter, though I post a lot more about politics and queer issues than I do about game design, sadly. I’d much prefer to write only about games and comics, but these are challenging times and it’s important to use the platform you have to spread awareness.
STEVE: We definitely appreciate folks checking out the Patreon and giving us a new way of continuing to bring you the Mutants & Masterminds support and content you enjoy, and hope that you’ll consider becoming a patron.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Amazon.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Crystal, Steve, thank you for taking the time to discuss Green Ronin Publishing’s Patreon for Mutants & Masterminds. For those that have not played M&M before, can you tell us a bit about the setting and system?
CRYSTAL FRASIER (CRYSTAL): Mutants & Masterminds at its core is a “roll a d20 and add your bonus” style game that adds a lot of elements from storytelling games so players have more freedom to use their abilities in creative ways or even add elements to the story. The game is presented without setting in the core book, but we spend a lot of time fleshing out Earth-Prime, which pays some homage to our favorite comic book characters and storylines while adding a lot of “four-color modern” flavor.
STEVE KENSON (STEVE): In brief, Mutants & Masterminds is a d20-based system built around the d20 + modifier vs. a difficulty class system familiar to players of D&D and other d20-based games. It has developed considerably since it’s D&D 3rd Edition based roots. Although there’s considerable content for Earth-Prime, the setting Green Ronin has been supporting since the first edition of Freedom City, M&M itself is a “setting agnostic” game system, suitable for all kinds of super-powered settings.
EGG: This isn’t the “standard” Patreon, it’s an official Green Ronin Publishing endeavor. What advantages does Green Ronin see for M&M with this service?
CRYSTAL: Printing physical books is becoming increasingly difficult and is a slow process, so we can’t deliver new M&M content as often as we or the fans would like, and it unfortunately means a lot of older content can’t get the attention it deserves. Patreon gives us the option to release small bits of content at a time in a platform where we can easily hear about what fans want and deliver exactly that, or work on small projects that don’t have an obvious place in the normal print release schedule. Case in point: Our fans on M&M Monday told us they were craving more villains, so the first series of releases for the Patreon are villains!
STEVE: The pandemic has affected how we deliver content to our fans. Patreon both provides Green Ronin with another venue to provide Mutants & Masterminds fans with content for the game, and another kind of content we can deliver. In particular, Patreon lets us tackle smaller projects that don’t necessarily fit into a larger product.
EGG: What edition of M&M will the content available through this crowdfunding platform support?
CRYSTAL: The material will all be for 3rd edition, with a big focus on updating material from previous editions to the current one. We’re hoping to also tinker with some optional rules ideas that, again, don’t have an obvious place in our print books, and that might include updating rules and feats from older editions to 3rd edition.
STEVE: Although the M&M Patreon will focus on 3rd edition content, one of those aforementioned smaller projects is updating some earlier edition content to 3rd edition, so there will definitely be things for fans of “classic” M&M products!
STEVE: I like to think of “Sidekick” as the “core” backer level. It gets patrons pretty much all of the actual content we release through the Patreon.
CRYSTAL: Like Steve said, “Sidekick” is the presumed default for most of our backers. At the current release schedule that gets you one character PDF a week for the same price you’d pay for a single Rogues Gallery or Threat Report installment. As the Patreon grows and we can dedicate more time to it, however, that value grows because you’ll start getting access to new setting material and eventually twice as many villains.
EGG: What do you get at the highest level, “Prime”?
CRYSTAL: “Prime” is the level that gives dedicated fans some personal investment in Mutants & Masterminds. At that level you can participate in developer chats to get answers to your burning setting and rules questions and ask for advice, and you also get name-dropped into the Earth-Prime setting, preserving you as a part of superhero posterity.
STEVE: The “Hero” and “Prime” tiers are more interactive, for really engaged fans, offering things like voting on upcoming projects, interacting with us through development chats or live-streams, and chances to even get name-dropped in new M&M content!
EGG: Like many crowdfunding projects, this one has stretch goals. When these are unlocked, what will they offer to the backers?
STEVE: The Patreon doesn’t have “stretch goals” so much as it has just regular old goals, or what we might call “benchmarks” that represent a point at which we can devote more time and resources to producing content through the Patreon. As the Patreon has more support, it “levels up” and can offer more to all of the patrons in terms of content. It’s a win-win.
CRYSTAL: The benchmarks basically tell us when people are interested enough in this weird side material that we can start dedicating more time and resources to it. The first benchmark is generating some new content; basically every month both Steve and I will do a short blog-style entry describing something in detail in Earth-Prime, like discussing a specific store or urban legend or organization. Later benchmarks will unlock even more content for the same price.
EGG: Those are cool offers. This Patreon focuses on updating existing content. Will this content be made available to non-Patreon backers somewhere else?
STEVE: I think the only exclusivity we can promise patrons is that they will see content on the Patreon first. That said, since a number of Patreon projects are things we wouldn’t have done or released as stand-alones, there’s a good chance they’ll remain Patreon “exclusive” until we find another venue suited to release them, such as an updated edition of a sourcebook or the like. We are… weren’t not great at long-term planning. That’s why we’re not villains.
CRYSTAL: The plan is for this material to be available for exclusively to patrons for the time being. A later benchmark will open the basic statblock material for everyone, and I’m not going to rule out the idea of putting together print “M&M Annuals” from Patreon material or something similar, but hopefully if we do something like that we’ll include a special nod to our patrons to let them know their faith in us is appreciated.
EGG: Beyond the Patreon, what other 2021 M&M content can fans expect from Green Ronin?
CRYSTAL: 2021 is finally going to get the print edition of Danger Zones ready for everyone, with expanded material beyond the individual PDFs, and we’ll be continuing the Astonishing Adventures line with new material to get GMs and players busy. We’re hopefully also going to squeeze the Vigilante’s Handbook in with some Astonishing Adventure support. Just keep in mind that we’re just a pair of part-timers.
STEVE: The overall M&M schedule is Crystal’s bailiwick. I’m just looking forward to being involved in as many of those projects as time and scheduling allow!
EGG: What non-M&M projects are you working on for Green Ronin or for yourself?
CRYSTAL: I like to chip in on other Green Ronin lines when I can, especially AGE. I also have a few writing projects going outside the industry like the upcoming Love is a Battlefield anthology for DC Comics and an unnamed graphic novel from Oni Press. I also publish some of my own game tinkering and writing advice on my personal Patreon.
STEVE: I write for pretty much all of Green Ronin’s game lines to one degree or another, so I have various irons in the fire for AGE System projects for Blue Rose, Modern AGE, Fantasy AGE, or The Expanse, as well as Mutants & Masterminds. I also just launched another Patreon to support content for Icons Superpowered Roleplaying from my own Ad Infinitum Adventures imprint, letting me apply the notion of “short, monthly content from a grab-bag of diverse ideas” to that game as well. It’s at [my Patreon].
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans find this Patreon and follow your work?
CRYSTAL: The Patreon is [here]. You can follow me most easily on Twitter, though I post a lot more about politics and queer issues than I do about game design, sadly. I’d much prefer to write only about games and comics, but these are challenging times and it’s important to use the platform you have to spread awareness.
STEVE: We definitely appreciate folks checking out the Patreon and giving us a new way of continuing to bring you the Mutants & Masterminds support and content you enjoy, and hope that you’ll consider becoming a patron.
Mutants & Masterminds from Green Ronin Publishing
“Creating the world’s #1 superhero roleplaying game.” Special thanks to Owen KC Stephens for suggesting this article as well as Troy Hewitt for arranging it with the creators.Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Amazon.
