Check Out The Mutants & Masterminds 4E Playtest

Released last week at Gen Con, the 4th Edition of the venerable superhero TTRPG Mutants & Masterminds is here--at least in playtest form! This 240-page book, which you can grab right now on DriveThruRPG as a PDF for $14.99 or in print for $44.99 from Green Ronin's website, includes the complete game from character creation to the core game rules.

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For more than twenty years, the Mutants & Masterminds superhero roleplaying game has empowered the imaginations of countless players. Now you can help determine the future of the World’s Greatest Superhero RPG with the Mutants & Masterminds Origin Edition playtest!

This Origin Edition contains a complete playtest version of the upcoming Fourth Edition of the game. Contained in its pages is all you need to create heroic characters, play out epic super-battles, thwart the schemes of the vilest villains, and save the world—all with just a single twenty-sided die!

Try out refined power creation effects, updated hero archetypes, an adjusted rank scale, new advantage and action options, and more, all with the same fast-playing system M&M is known for. Then share your experiences and feedback with us to determine the final form of the next edition of the game.

The world needs heroes like you to help save it! The game needs you to make it even better! So create your heroes and determine the future of superhero roleplaying with the Mutants & Masterminds Origin Edition.

 

[Theory of Games]

I'm not sure how you DO make an abstract movement system out of a system that still has d20 in its DNA, but it's worth trying.

Theatre of the mind

Theatre of the mind is a style of play in which the game world is wholly imagined by the players instead of being represented by game aids. That is, theatre of the mind games do not use miniatures, but also generally do not use props, maps, diagrams, or any other physical game aids. The emphasis...

rpgmuseum.fandom.com

Sly Flourish's Guide to to Narrative "Theater of the Mind" Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons

Note, this guide has been updated since the original written in October 2015. This guide aims to help Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition DMs run narrative "theater of the mind" style combat. This style of...

slyflourish.com

10 Reasons Theatre of the Mind Reigns Supreme

Physical minis and terrain are undeniably cool, but they can't compete in terms of immersion and imagination.

theholyroller.substack.com

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Gah. We're charging for a playtest pdf now? Do they want people to playtest the thing or not?

Well, how many playtests are as big as an average D&D 5e book?

I would be interested but I think I felt out of love with superheroes.

 

[Jeffzilla]

Just use what's in the archetypes and skip the rest.

Seconded. When we were playing M&M3e we started using the Basic Heroes Handbook instead of the 'core' rules because creating characters using archetypes was so much easier. And it looks like maybe M&M4e is going to lean into this method.

 

[Theory of Games]

Never got to play 3rd edition of this, though I did buy the book. The system seems pretty cool, but I believe it would probably be better if they made it less fiddly? I don't think, for example, that the system with feats (advantages) is a good idea at all.

For me it would be an improvement if they simplified that part of the system away.

The large number of conditions is also tricky to keep track of.

What's important is reading an rpg is a huge difference from actually playing the the rpg, especially playing a campaign (a series of linked adventures). Reading doesn't provide the experience of seeing how dice rolls and GM Fiat impact the system.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Hmm, even having the grid at all i think is a bit of a relic of D&D3e that's best moved past in the case of M&M. Super fights should be kinetic, not based around fiddly accounting for individual squares/hexes/spaces of movement to minimise attacks of opportunity etc. I'm not sure how you DO make an abstract movement system out of a system that still has d20 in its DNA, but it's worth trying.

Or maybe it depends on how big a 'space' is. If you move away from the D&D 5ft space to, for instance a 30ft space to represent the movement distance of a regular human, then it could scale up ok. Just assume everyone in a single 'space' is functionally able to attack anyone else in the same space in melee. Standard movement distance is 1 space for an regular baseline human, superspeed and flight etc can increase that.

Or something like that.

I mean the grid is not particularly limiting in play - no one is counting squares with superhuman movement. You use the rank table for distance and time, particularly outdoors and long distances. Flight 10 = 2000 mph or 2 miles per round so 5' here or there is nothing. The grid only really comes up with building interiors which helps with line of sight issues and what gets hit by AoE's, things like that. I've never felt the need for abstract movement as that can get weird in other games. M&M doesn't have attacks of opportunity so that's not really a factor. Abstract movement and ranges can work in a more abstract game - like Icons, for example - but it's not a great fit in a more detailed system.

And gridded movement for supers predates 3E - Champions used 6' hexes from 1st edition up until the most recent edition.

 

[Muh]

What's important is reading an rpg is a huge difference from actually playing the the rpg, especially playing a campaign (a series of linked adventures). Reading doesn't provide the experience of seeing how dice rolls and GM Fiat impact the system.

This is true, except I have actually made characters in system and it's the chargen bit that I think is too fiddly.

 

[humble minion]

This is true, except I have actually made characters in system and it's the chargen bit that I think is too fiddly.

Yeah, that’s been similar to my experience too. M&M is mostly pretty quick in play (there are pain points, like recalculating everything after getting hit with a Weaken, or trying to manage a speedster on a battle map if that’s your jam, or sitting around twiddling thumbs while someone tries to come up with a new power on the fly after spending a Hero Point to get Alternate Effect). It’s even not too bad in char gen if you’re willing to just use the archetypes. If you want to handcraft everything and have lots of powers with multiple modifiers and special cases etc - THAT’S when you need to pull out the spreadsheet. Or HeroLab.

 

[overgeeked]

This is true, except I have actually made characters in system and it's the chargen bit that I think is too fiddly.

Exactly. It’s wildly over complicated for too little payoff. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The kind of lifepath character creation where you just pick options was great. As was random char gen. Anything to avoid all that pointless math and wasted time.

Yeah, that’s been similar to my experience too. M&M is mostly pretty quick in play (there are pain points, like recalculating everything after getting hit with a Weaken, or trying to manage a speedster on a battle map if that’s your jam, or sitting around twiddling thumbs while someone tries to come up with a new power on the fly after spending a Hero Point to get Alternate Effect). It’s even not too bad in char gen if you’re willing to just use the archetypes. If you want to handcraft everything and have lots of powers with multiple modifiers and special cases etc - THAT’S when you need to pull out the spreadsheet. Or HeroLab.

Again, exactly. Having to recalculate on the fly, in the middle of combat is just an absolute momentum killer. It got so bad we had to ban power stunts if the player hadn’t already done the math. To me that’s a clear red flag for a superhero game. That’s one of the most fun parts of reading comics and dreaming about superheroes. Having it be a massive pain point in actual play kills my interest dead.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, that’s been similar to my experience too. M&M is mostly pretty quick in play (there are pain points, like recalculating everything after getting hit with a Weaken, or trying to manage a speedster on a battle map if that’s your jam, or sitting around twiddling thumbs while someone tries to come up with a new power on the fly after spending a Hero Point to get Alternate Effect). It’s even not too bad in char gen if you’re willing to just use the archetypes. If you want to handcraft everything and have lots of powers with multiple modifiers and special cases etc - THAT’S when you need to pull out the spreadsheet. Or HeroLab.

I don't have any problem with complex character gen if play still runs well. You interact with the character gen rules far less often, after all.

 

[Jeffzilla]

This is true, except I have actually made characters in system and it's the chargen bit that I think is too fiddly.M&M3e's chargen fiddly factor

M&M3e's chargen fiddly factor is near-nil if you're making a character which is neatly covered by one of the templates and it dials up gradually from there the further you depart from a template.

Where it gets uber fiddly though, unless you're already pretty familiar with character options, is when you try to free-form chargen without using a template at all. And as much as I love the system, I won't deny that my head was spinning the first couple of times I even attempted it.