After the disappointment I felt upon completion of Green Ronin’s
Noir supplement for
Mutants and Masterminds, I found myself in the sad position of contemplating the fact that my favorite game system’s product line might well have plateaued, if not actually begun it’s decline.
[imager]http://www.greenronin.com/images/product/grr2010_200.jpg [/imager]
With the publication of
Noir, Green Ronin had abandoned the full-color, glossy format which they had used to such great effect in the entire M&M line.
Oh, the proper noises were made about it being an aesthetic choice (Black and White being evocative of the film noir they were hoping to model), but even if true, it made for a cheaper-looking, indeed
lesser product.
And while it was all well and good to really
aim at creating a genre, the simple truth was that outside of a very few experimental examples (I’m looking at you,
Sin City) I’d never really felt the tropes of Film Noir were all that applicable to superheroic action as depicted in the comics, and I felt that if cheaply produced sourcebooks on eclectic subject matter were the way the Product Line was heading, then I would just thank the gaming Gods for what
M&M had already provided (Startling product quality with loving attention to genre detail) and take a few steps back from my more completist tendencies.
But that was
Noir.
This is
Gimmick’s Guide to Gadgets (which I will be referring to as
GG2G from this point out as it is both far less typing, and makes me look cool, hip and by God…
Cyber 
) and folks,
this is no Noir.
If
GG2G is any indication of the way things are heading for the product line, it has far from
“Jumped the Shark”, and
Noir was nothing more than the anomaly I prayed it was.
First off, the production values are back. I know many gentle readers out there
positively bristle at the notion of high-quality art and paper (particularly if it might mean a higher price point) but not I. Superhero RPG’s
need superhero art, and in today’s comic market that means color, and that means high quality paper. I know that I took
Noir to task for making an esthetic choice like the one I’m describing here, but to paraphrase both
Walt Whitman (whom I abhor)…
[bq]“Do I contradict myself? Fine I contradict myself. I am large, I can contain multitudes”[/bq]
…and
Ralph Waldo Emerson (whom I respect and admire)…
[bq] “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”[/bq]
You see Gentle readers? Do you see to what I have been reduced? Quoting
Walt Whitman in a review of RPG product!
I weep.
I weep for us all.
OK, that was a meaningless aside… but screw it. It’s staying in. If you want mechanically sound, coherent product reviews I recommend
Psion or perhaps
John Cooper (Who I believe is
actually a machine
).
GG2G not only has the production values of earlier
M&M product, but also addresses a subject that
needed addressing, and is the work of a writer whose name can easily be used as a synonym for quality ‘round these parts: Mike Mearls. [imager]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/Teflon_Billy/mearls.jpg[/imager]
The necessary fixes and expansions that this book provides are legion.
The superpower
Gadgets in the Core Book was great for one thing: Modeling characters who always seemed to have the right doohickey on hand when it was “Crunch time”.
Moose Attack?
Captain Gadget whips out Moose Repellant.
Is Doctor Zombo flying away from the scene of a crime?
Well ‘lo and behold;
these boots have jets in them!.
It was a well done system that allowed the necessary flexibility to emulate comics and (thanks to
M&M’s Hero point mechanic) was not overpowering in play.
But it was a lousy way to model a Super Scientist (e.g. Reed Richards) or Tinkerer (e.g. Junkman) as they are most often portrayed.
The author has solved this with panache. The creation of the new powers
Scientific Genius and
Spontaneous Inventor literally go the whole way in correcting this gap in the rules. Hell, add the
Stretching power as an extra to
Scientrific Genius (plus as many levels of Super Intelligence as you can afford) and you
have Reed Richards.
They are both subtle reworkings of the
Gadgets power that take into account such detriments as necessary time spent in a lab, and such benefits as Bonuses to Computer and Science rolls. Really masterfully done.
GG2G has also provided some very nicely expanded rules for Construct Characters including Construct-specific feats and several examples of Constructs for different Power Sources.
The chapter (Two) on Designing Gadgets and Devices was wonderfully done, as it provided a slew of new Extras and Flaws aimed at giving some more “feel” to devices than “powers that can be Taken away” (Which is largely what you get in the core book).
A little further on there is a whole separate section on
Designing Weapons—why it is 2 full chapters and 60 pages away from “designing Devices” I’m not sure—which includes a clarification every M&M player I know of has been waiting for:
Laced Power.
Laced Power is an extra that allows an attack to have a secondary effect. So, for example, your “Cold Blast” (
Energy Blast power) can now have a secondary “freezing” effect (
Paralysis power). Yes, technically it’s just the old
Triggered Extra renamed, but it provides clarity that the Character Creation rules did not.
I do wonder what this means for the
Energy Field extra listed on the
Weapon power in the revised core rules, which allows exactly this effect at an incredibly reduced cost, but I hope that
Laced Power is the new standard (as it absolutely will be in any game I run).
There are large sections on incorporating a non-standard “technology level” into your Campaign which, unlike most such sections in RPG’s, contains a fair number of crunchy rules systems for maintaining/enforcing this tech level as well as an immense section of the book giving an example of a device for
every single power in the core book. I’m not sure this part was necessary, but some of the examples are terrific inspiration.
Very complete rules for computers, hacking, an expanded Vehicles system...there is really a lot here for the money and page count.
What didn’t I like?
Well, the Device rules, as presented in the
M&M Core Book, are playable, but only of very limited utility, lacking most of the flexibility one would expect from observing Gadgeteers in the source material (comics!)
Vast gaps in utility appear in the core book, as all devices—no matter what actual item the device represents—are assigned the same cost reduction. So, for example,
Energy Blast defined as a pistol can have the
disarm maneuver used against it, while a similar
Energy Blast incorporated, say, into a suit of armor (against which disarm cannot be used) cost the same. A Magic Ring that shoots an
Entangle attack from it’s gemstone cost the exact same amount as a Magic Ring that sits innocuously on the wearers hand and allows
him to launch an identical attack. The HERO system handled this situation beautifully with it’s
Focus rules, and I was hoping for something similar in
GG2G. Alas, that level of “Granularity” seems to evade the developers of the M&M rules (if it is even a goal, which it may well not be).
But all told, this product is great. It addresses a lot of the issues that I had with Devices in the game, and should be considered another Core Book by
M&M enthusiasts.
It looks like
Mutants and Masterminds is back on track.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
