Messageboard Golem
First Post
This issue is a M&M superlink product. It describes an Earth where all people now have super powers to some degree, and how player-characters would adventure in a world where the extraordinary is ordinary.
Minigame Magazine #3: Mutatis Mutandis
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Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Minigame Magazine is a PDF product published monthly by Valent Games. This is issue #3, released for June (though it’s more correctly the June/July issue, since the authors mention in the introduction that the next issue won’t be out until August). It is 48 pages in length, with sporadic black and white interior artwork. A set of bookmarks in the PDF make it easy to jump around to various parts of the file, including bookmarks to the art. This issue is roughly the same in terms of size as the previous issue, weighing in at 2.3 megabytes as a zip file. It can be downloaded for $6 from RPGnow.com. It’s important to note that this is a Mutants and Masterminds Superlink product, and the mechanics here are meant for M&M gaming.
Before I continue, there are a few caveats I want to point out. First, it bears repeating that this is a Mutants and Masterminds Superlink product. If you do not have the Mutants and Masterminds core rulebook, you’ll have a hard time with the mechanics presented here. The flipside to that is that this product is almost all flavor text; only a small portion of this issue (roughly one-sixth) has mechanical content, meaning that you’ll stand to get quite a bit of use from this product even if you use a different superhero RPG system.
Ironically, this leads into my second notation: I myself don’t own a copy of Mutants and Masterminds. While this does somewhat complicate my reviewing this product, as I said above, most of this is flavor text, so only a small portion of my review is adversely affected by this lack of knowledge; I also asked a friend of mine with a copy of M&M some questions about it, so a few pointed comments on the mechanics are still possible.
It’s been interesting to see the evolution of the style of minigames presented in Valent Games’s newest product line. The first issue presented a different manner of campaigning (playing goblinoids) which could easily be done in any particular d20 fantasy world with those races – when your current campaign retires, just have them make new characters from that orc nation they raided a while back. The second issue was almost the opposite. That presented a specific, established location, one that had its own unique society that served as the basis of play (and in turn set the “political intrigue” tone for that campaign). The newest issue blends the two styles, presenting a campaign with established back-story, but without localizing your characters or making the campaign have a particular tone by default.
The title of this issue is “Mutatis Mutandis”, which, as near as I can tell, is Latin for “mutants mutating”. It’s an apt title, since the theme of this issue is a modern-day world in which everyone, every single person on Earth, has super powers.
The opening paragraphs next to the table of contents are interesting in that they almost immediately open with the authors saying, in what is an almost-apologetic tone, that they could have done so much more, were it not for the realities of having only so much time and space. I find this interesting since one of my chief complaints about the previous Minigame Magazines has been that some aspect of the issue didn’t receive enough coverage. Between this little disclaimer, and the emphasis this issue has on fluff rather than crunch, it seems like the people at Valent Games are trying to correct this, which is a very encouraging trend.
Since they’re spread out over the product, I’ll note here that this issue has several sidebars throughout its pages. These tend to expound upon whatever is being discussed at the time, from who was the real first person to have super powers, to the breakdown of Power Levels across the global population. I just love easter eggs like this.
The product opens with a one-page section titled “Inspirations.” While the titles mentioned here range from “The Ultimates” to “ER”, it’s no surprise that the first series mentioned are Earth X and its sequels (Universe X and Paradise X) from Marvel. I’m calling this particular series out for a reason (one that the authors themselves have at the beginning of this section); while it may seem like Mutatis Mutandis is completely ripping off Earth X, in that it’s about the entire world having super powers, there is a difference that, though subtle, is pervasive enough that this product has a very different feel. In Earth X, the entire world suddenly and with virtually no warning gains super powers, whereas in Mutatis Mutandis, the global population has been slowly gaining them for the last century or so.
“How the World Changed” is the first section of the product, nine pages long, opening with the altered history of the campaign world. The Earth of Mutatis Mutandis was the same as ours until Edison’s harnessing of electricity began to result in electric power being part of public life. The key here is that electricity, even when it’s ambient, affect the human body by unlocking dormant potential. As electricity grew more prolific, more and more people manifested powers. That isn’t the only change though. Indeed, far from it. Since some people developed intelligence of unbelievable levels, the industrial (and, later, information) boom hit much harder than it did in the real world. As a result, by the year 2004, the technology used in this world has leapt much further forward, leading to a very different but startlingly similar world than the one you or I know. It’s worth noting, however, that super powers are the ONLY difference. There is still no real magic, no aliens, no knowing what happens after you die, etc.
Following this is a look at the world as it stands today. We’re given brief overviews of various continents of the world, though important regions (such as the Middle East), nations (such as Switzerland), and even cities (such as Tokyo) also get mentions specific to them. In addition, there is also coverage given to the undersea colony-nation of Pacificus, the lunar colony Tycho, and (my personal favorite) the advanced Ragnarok prison, detention center of the worst criminal offenders, set on the surface of Mars…about three billions years plus in the future.
Rounding out the section is the subsection on organizations. Three are given here: The Crimson Eight, an X-Men-like vigilante group lead by a supremely powerful telepath; Paraforce, the government body dedicated to protecting American interests as well as policing the nation, whether their methods are constitutional or not; and the Green Cross, the international relief agency funded by a single man...so long as he can keep regulating the stock market.
Following the world overview is the “Changes in Everyday Life” section. This covers things from laws to pop culture that have been altered by the emergence of super powers. After all, people with the resurrection power have made it harder to tell who is and isn’t dead; likewise, people with super speed need their own highways, and the fliers need their own skyways. Ironically, this entire section takes up only half the amount of space as the world coverage, weighing in at four-and-a-half pages.
The longest section of the entire product is the ten pages dedicated to “Campaign Advice”. A significant theme of this section (though not the only one) is how to play ordinary people. After all, your characters may have super powers, but who doesn’t? This can be somewhat difficult to deal with, given that most players will naturally assume that people with super powers are, by default, superheroes or supervillains (things this world doesn’t possess). Given that PC will still want to adventure, the game points out that the best thing to do is have the characters take careers that involve some level of adversity. Subsections talk about careers from homicide detective to military operative to member of Paraforce. Who wouldn’t think it was cool to play NYPD Blue with the ability to phase through walls? And just imagine what it would be like trying to run an X-Files-themed game in this world…
It’s worth mentioning that this section drives home the point mentioned above: there are no superheroes (nor supervillains). The closest equivalent are people with an extraordinarily high Power Level (most average people have a PL of 2-6). Even then, these people mostly perform jobs for a government, corporation, or other organization. None wear a costume (save for one NPC) since there aren’t even any superhero comics in this world for would-be superheroes to model themselves on.
The mechanical section of the book begins with three new feats that, collectively, take up half of a page. Sadly, these feats don’t seem to live up to the above-par writing we’ve seen so far in the product. The first two, Household Uses and Useless Power, are basically feats for flavor. While they’re certainly good for giving a character more of a feel, nobody would want to spend a feat slot and get no mechanical advantage for it, which is exactly what these two do. Do you really need to take Household Uses as a feat so your character can use Energy Field (cold) to chill his beer? Do you need to purchase Useless Power to have a superpower that gives you no numeric bonuses, instead of just jotting it down for flavor on your character sheet? Feats should give something to your character in terms of roll-playing primarily, since you’re expending a precious feat slot for them. The third feat, Super-Gossip, is somewhat more useful, since it lets you possibly know the gist of the powers of someone you’ve heard of, but it’s still by no means a stellar choice.
Fortunately, the four-page section on new powers holds its own much better than its feat counterpart. The three meta-powers here, Power Scan, Remove Immunity, and Suppress Weakness, are much cooler in terms of what they accomplish. Power Scan (originally appearing in Devil’s Workshop’s “Power Corrupts”) is exactly what it sounds like, so you know it’s useful to have. Remove Immunity is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative powers I’ve seen in a while. It’s predicated on the idea that all superpowers subtly protect the user from the harmful side-effects of said power; think of how the Human Torch can ignite himself but not be burned, or how Colossus can make himself metal and not be immobilized by how much he weighs. This power undoes that built-in immunity. The last one, Suppress Weakness, does what it sounds like, letting allies overcome whatever their kryptonite is.
The second half of the new powers section deals with the restrictions and alterations to powers that are unique to Mutatis Mutandis. There are only a few, but by defining what can’t be done, they help to establish the tone of the setting. Dimensional Travel is banned outright since people could use that to visit the afterlife and return, to say nothing of visiting a parallel world where people don’t have super powers. Time Travel isn’t banned, but it comes close. Only one NPC has that power, and the few other uses of it are in highly guarded machines, which require an incredible degree of fine-tuning to operate properly. Furthermore, there is a strange temporal phenomenon called Absolute Present. This phenomenon prevents anyone from traveling back in time to before the Absolute Present barrier; what’s more, the barrier itself moved forward in time at roughly a 1:1 scale with time’s normal advancement. The barrier itself is roughly ten seconds prior to the “right now” of the campaign world. So you can jump thousands of years into the future, but not back in time any further than whatever time the Absolute Present has reached currently.
The last specific power called out here is Energy Field (electricity), though in truth it applies to all electric super powers. Really, this isn’t a restriction so much as it is a proviso. Though all people gain their super powers from electric exposure, the text here lays out flatly that this power doesn’t act as a meta-power; people who control electricity cannot affect the super powers of anyone else by electricity alone (though they can buy the meta-powers normally, along with an electric power, and say the former is due to the latter). While this certainly makes sense in terms of game balance, and the authors even try to explain why, this section seemed somewhat odd to me. Earlier, where it talks about health care in this world, it says that electroshock therapy was abandoned since using it on people gave them “bizarre and uncontrollable” powers. So if that’s true of electroshock therapy, why isn’t it true for zapping someone with a lightning bolt? This disparity puts something of a damper on things.
The section closes out with the list of restrictions on power sources. You can’t say your character’s super powers are due to aliens when, in fact, this world has never actually encountered any aliens, and ditto for saying it’s mystic in origin (don’t worry, you can still take Sorcery as a power; it just can’t be actual magic that’s fueling it).
The NPC section presents five pages devoted to six non-player characters the PC’s could meet in their career. While some of these characters seem fairly ordinary, quite a few are very inspired, especially since they serve to highlight exactly what makes Mutatis Mutandis so different from other superhero settings. Some examples are Thomas J. Byrne, the man with invisibility to all five senses, and can’t shut his power off; Kyran Ariv, the only person to have Time Travel as a natural power; and Avatar, the only costumed do-gooder in the entire world (and consequentially, regarded as something of a freakish tourist attraction).
The eight pages of Plot Seeds are (after a brief section on possible plot seeds about why exactly electricity makes humans manifest powers) divided into four groups: “normal people” “police & rescue” “government & military” and “superheroes” (remember that term just denotes a high PL, not costumed crime fighters). Each section apparently covers a range of about five Power Levels in increasing order. It’s interesting how at least one of the plot seeds runs through every group, with a bit more being given in each one – not so much different facets of the same crime (though it could be played that way) as different, ever more complex ways for a GM to run such a crime.
The product closes out with a two-page table to quickly determine the super powers of random people. It goes without saying that this is extremely valuable to a Mutatis Mutandis GM. Following this is one page for the OGL, and one more of plugs for other Valent Games products.
I can say without hesitation that Mutatis Mutandis is an extremely well-written product. The flavor text seems to leap off the page like, and since that’s the bulk of this product, readers are definitely going to enjoy the presentation here. However, there are still a few things that prevent me from giving this a 5/5 rating. For one, between the feats and powers, there are six new things for PCs and NPCs to take. Having two of those six be duds (the feats I mentioned above) is fairly significant in that regard. Likewise, when the authors themselves say that they wish they could have added more space, it becomes somewhat hard to justify why a page was devoted to ads. There are no physical print settings here, so it’s not like they couldn’t have used that page for text instead. This is compounded if you note that the first issue of Minigame Magazine was 52 pages, compared to the 48 here. It’s only a reduction of one-thirteenth, but you’re still losing four pages that could have been further describing this world, for no price increase.
Still, I would recommend this product to anyone who plays M&M, and even people that play other kinds of super hero games. Six dollars is eminently worth it for this kind of quality, and the campaign is refreshingly different while still having everything about a superhero game that people love. Mutatis Mutandis may be about ordinary people, but it’s definitely got something super.
Before I continue, there are a few caveats I want to point out. First, it bears repeating that this is a Mutants and Masterminds Superlink product. If you do not have the Mutants and Masterminds core rulebook, you’ll have a hard time with the mechanics presented here. The flipside to that is that this product is almost all flavor text; only a small portion of this issue (roughly one-sixth) has mechanical content, meaning that you’ll stand to get quite a bit of use from this product even if you use a different superhero RPG system.
Ironically, this leads into my second notation: I myself don’t own a copy of Mutants and Masterminds. While this does somewhat complicate my reviewing this product, as I said above, most of this is flavor text, so only a small portion of my review is adversely affected by this lack of knowledge; I also asked a friend of mine with a copy of M&M some questions about it, so a few pointed comments on the mechanics are still possible.
It’s been interesting to see the evolution of the style of minigames presented in Valent Games’s newest product line. The first issue presented a different manner of campaigning (playing goblinoids) which could easily be done in any particular d20 fantasy world with those races – when your current campaign retires, just have them make new characters from that orc nation they raided a while back. The second issue was almost the opposite. That presented a specific, established location, one that had its own unique society that served as the basis of play (and in turn set the “political intrigue” tone for that campaign). The newest issue blends the two styles, presenting a campaign with established back-story, but without localizing your characters or making the campaign have a particular tone by default.
The title of this issue is “Mutatis Mutandis”, which, as near as I can tell, is Latin for “mutants mutating”. It’s an apt title, since the theme of this issue is a modern-day world in which everyone, every single person on Earth, has super powers.
The opening paragraphs next to the table of contents are interesting in that they almost immediately open with the authors saying, in what is an almost-apologetic tone, that they could have done so much more, were it not for the realities of having only so much time and space. I find this interesting since one of my chief complaints about the previous Minigame Magazines has been that some aspect of the issue didn’t receive enough coverage. Between this little disclaimer, and the emphasis this issue has on fluff rather than crunch, it seems like the people at Valent Games are trying to correct this, which is a very encouraging trend.
Since they’re spread out over the product, I’ll note here that this issue has several sidebars throughout its pages. These tend to expound upon whatever is being discussed at the time, from who was the real first person to have super powers, to the breakdown of Power Levels across the global population. I just love easter eggs like this.
The product opens with a one-page section titled “Inspirations.” While the titles mentioned here range from “The Ultimates” to “ER”, it’s no surprise that the first series mentioned are Earth X and its sequels (Universe X and Paradise X) from Marvel. I’m calling this particular series out for a reason (one that the authors themselves have at the beginning of this section); while it may seem like Mutatis Mutandis is completely ripping off Earth X, in that it’s about the entire world having super powers, there is a difference that, though subtle, is pervasive enough that this product has a very different feel. In Earth X, the entire world suddenly and with virtually no warning gains super powers, whereas in Mutatis Mutandis, the global population has been slowly gaining them for the last century or so.
“How the World Changed” is the first section of the product, nine pages long, opening with the altered history of the campaign world. The Earth of Mutatis Mutandis was the same as ours until Edison’s harnessing of electricity began to result in electric power being part of public life. The key here is that electricity, even when it’s ambient, affect the human body by unlocking dormant potential. As electricity grew more prolific, more and more people manifested powers. That isn’t the only change though. Indeed, far from it. Since some people developed intelligence of unbelievable levels, the industrial (and, later, information) boom hit much harder than it did in the real world. As a result, by the year 2004, the technology used in this world has leapt much further forward, leading to a very different but startlingly similar world than the one you or I know. It’s worth noting, however, that super powers are the ONLY difference. There is still no real magic, no aliens, no knowing what happens after you die, etc.
Following this is a look at the world as it stands today. We’re given brief overviews of various continents of the world, though important regions (such as the Middle East), nations (such as Switzerland), and even cities (such as Tokyo) also get mentions specific to them. In addition, there is also coverage given to the undersea colony-nation of Pacificus, the lunar colony Tycho, and (my personal favorite) the advanced Ragnarok prison, detention center of the worst criminal offenders, set on the surface of Mars…about three billions years plus in the future.
Rounding out the section is the subsection on organizations. Three are given here: The Crimson Eight, an X-Men-like vigilante group lead by a supremely powerful telepath; Paraforce, the government body dedicated to protecting American interests as well as policing the nation, whether their methods are constitutional or not; and the Green Cross, the international relief agency funded by a single man...so long as he can keep regulating the stock market.
Following the world overview is the “Changes in Everyday Life” section. This covers things from laws to pop culture that have been altered by the emergence of super powers. After all, people with the resurrection power have made it harder to tell who is and isn’t dead; likewise, people with super speed need their own highways, and the fliers need their own skyways. Ironically, this entire section takes up only half the amount of space as the world coverage, weighing in at four-and-a-half pages.
The longest section of the entire product is the ten pages dedicated to “Campaign Advice”. A significant theme of this section (though not the only one) is how to play ordinary people. After all, your characters may have super powers, but who doesn’t? This can be somewhat difficult to deal with, given that most players will naturally assume that people with super powers are, by default, superheroes or supervillains (things this world doesn’t possess). Given that PC will still want to adventure, the game points out that the best thing to do is have the characters take careers that involve some level of adversity. Subsections talk about careers from homicide detective to military operative to member of Paraforce. Who wouldn’t think it was cool to play NYPD Blue with the ability to phase through walls? And just imagine what it would be like trying to run an X-Files-themed game in this world…
It’s worth mentioning that this section drives home the point mentioned above: there are no superheroes (nor supervillains). The closest equivalent are people with an extraordinarily high Power Level (most average people have a PL of 2-6). Even then, these people mostly perform jobs for a government, corporation, or other organization. None wear a costume (save for one NPC) since there aren’t even any superhero comics in this world for would-be superheroes to model themselves on.
The mechanical section of the book begins with three new feats that, collectively, take up half of a page. Sadly, these feats don’t seem to live up to the above-par writing we’ve seen so far in the product. The first two, Household Uses and Useless Power, are basically feats for flavor. While they’re certainly good for giving a character more of a feel, nobody would want to spend a feat slot and get no mechanical advantage for it, which is exactly what these two do. Do you really need to take Household Uses as a feat so your character can use Energy Field (cold) to chill his beer? Do you need to purchase Useless Power to have a superpower that gives you no numeric bonuses, instead of just jotting it down for flavor on your character sheet? Feats should give something to your character in terms of roll-playing primarily, since you’re expending a precious feat slot for them. The third feat, Super-Gossip, is somewhat more useful, since it lets you possibly know the gist of the powers of someone you’ve heard of, but it’s still by no means a stellar choice.
Fortunately, the four-page section on new powers holds its own much better than its feat counterpart. The three meta-powers here, Power Scan, Remove Immunity, and Suppress Weakness, are much cooler in terms of what they accomplish. Power Scan (originally appearing in Devil’s Workshop’s “Power Corrupts”) is exactly what it sounds like, so you know it’s useful to have. Remove Immunity is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative powers I’ve seen in a while. It’s predicated on the idea that all superpowers subtly protect the user from the harmful side-effects of said power; think of how the Human Torch can ignite himself but not be burned, or how Colossus can make himself metal and not be immobilized by how much he weighs. This power undoes that built-in immunity. The last one, Suppress Weakness, does what it sounds like, letting allies overcome whatever their kryptonite is.
The second half of the new powers section deals with the restrictions and alterations to powers that are unique to Mutatis Mutandis. There are only a few, but by defining what can’t be done, they help to establish the tone of the setting. Dimensional Travel is banned outright since people could use that to visit the afterlife and return, to say nothing of visiting a parallel world where people don’t have super powers. Time Travel isn’t banned, but it comes close. Only one NPC has that power, and the few other uses of it are in highly guarded machines, which require an incredible degree of fine-tuning to operate properly. Furthermore, there is a strange temporal phenomenon called Absolute Present. This phenomenon prevents anyone from traveling back in time to before the Absolute Present barrier; what’s more, the barrier itself moved forward in time at roughly a 1:1 scale with time’s normal advancement. The barrier itself is roughly ten seconds prior to the “right now” of the campaign world. So you can jump thousands of years into the future, but not back in time any further than whatever time the Absolute Present has reached currently.
The last specific power called out here is Energy Field (electricity), though in truth it applies to all electric super powers. Really, this isn’t a restriction so much as it is a proviso. Though all people gain their super powers from electric exposure, the text here lays out flatly that this power doesn’t act as a meta-power; people who control electricity cannot affect the super powers of anyone else by electricity alone (though they can buy the meta-powers normally, along with an electric power, and say the former is due to the latter). While this certainly makes sense in terms of game balance, and the authors even try to explain why, this section seemed somewhat odd to me. Earlier, where it talks about health care in this world, it says that electroshock therapy was abandoned since using it on people gave them “bizarre and uncontrollable” powers. So if that’s true of electroshock therapy, why isn’t it true for zapping someone with a lightning bolt? This disparity puts something of a damper on things.
The section closes out with the list of restrictions on power sources. You can’t say your character’s super powers are due to aliens when, in fact, this world has never actually encountered any aliens, and ditto for saying it’s mystic in origin (don’t worry, you can still take Sorcery as a power; it just can’t be actual magic that’s fueling it).
The NPC section presents five pages devoted to six non-player characters the PC’s could meet in their career. While some of these characters seem fairly ordinary, quite a few are very inspired, especially since they serve to highlight exactly what makes Mutatis Mutandis so different from other superhero settings. Some examples are Thomas J. Byrne, the man with invisibility to all five senses, and can’t shut his power off; Kyran Ariv, the only person to have Time Travel as a natural power; and Avatar, the only costumed do-gooder in the entire world (and consequentially, regarded as something of a freakish tourist attraction).
The eight pages of Plot Seeds are (after a brief section on possible plot seeds about why exactly electricity makes humans manifest powers) divided into four groups: “normal people” “police & rescue” “government & military” and “superheroes” (remember that term just denotes a high PL, not costumed crime fighters). Each section apparently covers a range of about five Power Levels in increasing order. It’s interesting how at least one of the plot seeds runs through every group, with a bit more being given in each one – not so much different facets of the same crime (though it could be played that way) as different, ever more complex ways for a GM to run such a crime.
The product closes out with a two-page table to quickly determine the super powers of random people. It goes without saying that this is extremely valuable to a Mutatis Mutandis GM. Following this is one page for the OGL, and one more of plugs for other Valent Games products.
I can say without hesitation that Mutatis Mutandis is an extremely well-written product. The flavor text seems to leap off the page like, and since that’s the bulk of this product, readers are definitely going to enjoy the presentation here. However, there are still a few things that prevent me from giving this a 5/5 rating. For one, between the feats and powers, there are six new things for PCs and NPCs to take. Having two of those six be duds (the feats I mentioned above) is fairly significant in that regard. Likewise, when the authors themselves say that they wish they could have added more space, it becomes somewhat hard to justify why a page was devoted to ads. There are no physical print settings here, so it’s not like they couldn’t have used that page for text instead. This is compounded if you note that the first issue of Minigame Magazine was 52 pages, compared to the 48 here. It’s only a reduction of one-thirteenth, but you’re still losing four pages that could have been further describing this world, for no price increase.
Still, I would recommend this product to anyone who plays M&M, and even people that play other kinds of super hero games. Six dollars is eminently worth it for this kind of quality, and the campaign is refreshingly different while still having everything about a superhero game that people love. Mutatis Mutandis may be about ordinary people, but it’s definitely got something super.
GameWyrd
Explorer
Mutatis Mutandis: Minigame issue #3
Mutatis Mutandis is the third minigame magazine from Valent Games. The downside to GameWyrd being snowed under and months behind in reviews is that this magazine is far from being hot off the PDF press. The upside is that you can pick up Mutatis Mutandis more cheaply as Valent Games kindly drop the price for the back issues.
"Mutatis Mutandis" can commonly translate as "with the necessary changes" although the more literal translation would be "that having been changed which had to be changed". I'd like to seem clever and wise but I took that straight from the Mutatis Mutandis MUX website. Although the MUX is superhero based it has no (apparent) connection to Valent's Mutatis Mutandis.
This minigame is typical for Valent Games. Take what you know, scoop up a typical RPG groove, go to the widest part of the bell curve - and shake it all about. Mutatis Mutandis is a superhero setting where everyone has super powers. The postman delivers the mail with his telekinesis. Firemen fight fires with ice magic and freezing beams. Librarians remember every word they've ever read. Supermarket checkout girls know the total of your purchase before you reach the checkout and your bag's packed before you pocket your change.
Quite clearly the world of Mutatis Mutandis is very different from ours.
In many ways, though, Mutatis Mutandis is very similar with ours. We've had the two World Wars, we've had Vietnam, 9/11 and are currently in action against al-Qaeda.
It was electricity which brought the super powers to mankind. In the early days a few people had powers but these days everyone does. There has been legislation to cope with supers in the work force - no discriminating against or for these people - but in 2004 everyone has powers and there's little point.
Mutatis Mutandis is a Mutants & Masterminds Superlink product. This means it uses d20 rules but isn't D&D. There is a difference. There are no character classes or character levels in Mutants and Masterminds. Mutants & Masterminds really is one of the best superhero RPGs on the market.
The majority of this 48-paged PDF discusses the game setting. There's more though. There are new feats - I think "Useless Power" is a great feat. Useless Power does what it says it does - you've a useless power. Perhaps you can turn things blue. Perhaps you can mow the lawn with just a thought. Great! Useless Power lets you have this without the faff of Power Levels. This is a game enriching feat and players who take it without attempting to abuse it (slyly getting powers for nothing) should be commended (though I can already think of situations where being able to turn things blue could be handy).
There are new powers too; power scan, remove immunity, suppress weakness and restricted powers. The theme here is important. In a world where everyone has superpowers can be a tricky one to police. Prisons recover quickly from nuclear strikes (should that happen), have walls so thick that super-strong heroes/villains would struggle against and fields which suppress powers. These are interesting issues and its easy to see why so much of the 48-paged PDF talks us through them.
There are stats for NPCs and even a section which covers "Random Bystanders Powers". This is a world where causal crime is dangerous to the criminal's health. You'd think twice about attempting to grab a purse if the little old lady had super speed and strength or could turn into a ball of blazing cosmic fire.
The possibilities for plot are great. The PDF looks at plot for "Normal People" and there are samples in literature where you might have a non-powered cop in a world full of super powers, of Police and Rescue, of Government and Military and, of course, of Superheroes too.
Mutatis Mutandis is well written and interesting. It pitches the possibilities of the setting in such a positive, believable and tempting way that I suspect many doubters will become converts. Mutatis Matandis, the third minigame, is certainly worth checking out and so are The Other Side the first and The Book of Guilds the second in the series.
* This Mutatis Mutandis: Minigame issue #3 review was first published on GameWyrd.
Mutatis Mutandis is the third minigame magazine from Valent Games. The downside to GameWyrd being snowed under and months behind in reviews is that this magazine is far from being hot off the PDF press. The upside is that you can pick up Mutatis Mutandis more cheaply as Valent Games kindly drop the price for the back issues.
"Mutatis Mutandis" can commonly translate as "with the necessary changes" although the more literal translation would be "that having been changed which had to be changed". I'd like to seem clever and wise but I took that straight from the Mutatis Mutandis MUX website. Although the MUX is superhero based it has no (apparent) connection to Valent's Mutatis Mutandis.
This minigame is typical for Valent Games. Take what you know, scoop up a typical RPG groove, go to the widest part of the bell curve - and shake it all about. Mutatis Mutandis is a superhero setting where everyone has super powers. The postman delivers the mail with his telekinesis. Firemen fight fires with ice magic and freezing beams. Librarians remember every word they've ever read. Supermarket checkout girls know the total of your purchase before you reach the checkout and your bag's packed before you pocket your change.
Quite clearly the world of Mutatis Mutandis is very different from ours.
In many ways, though, Mutatis Mutandis is very similar with ours. We've had the two World Wars, we've had Vietnam, 9/11 and are currently in action against al-Qaeda.
It was electricity which brought the super powers to mankind. In the early days a few people had powers but these days everyone does. There has been legislation to cope with supers in the work force - no discriminating against or for these people - but in 2004 everyone has powers and there's little point.
Mutatis Mutandis is a Mutants & Masterminds Superlink product. This means it uses d20 rules but isn't D&D. There is a difference. There are no character classes or character levels in Mutants and Masterminds. Mutants & Masterminds really is one of the best superhero RPGs on the market.
The majority of this 48-paged PDF discusses the game setting. There's more though. There are new feats - I think "Useless Power" is a great feat. Useless Power does what it says it does - you've a useless power. Perhaps you can turn things blue. Perhaps you can mow the lawn with just a thought. Great! Useless Power lets you have this without the faff of Power Levels. This is a game enriching feat and players who take it without attempting to abuse it (slyly getting powers for nothing) should be commended (though I can already think of situations where being able to turn things blue could be handy).
There are new powers too; power scan, remove immunity, suppress weakness and restricted powers. The theme here is important. In a world where everyone has superpowers can be a tricky one to police. Prisons recover quickly from nuclear strikes (should that happen), have walls so thick that super-strong heroes/villains would struggle against and fields which suppress powers. These are interesting issues and its easy to see why so much of the 48-paged PDF talks us through them.
There are stats for NPCs and even a section which covers "Random Bystanders Powers". This is a world where causal crime is dangerous to the criminal's health. You'd think twice about attempting to grab a purse if the little old lady had super speed and strength or could turn into a ball of blazing cosmic fire.
The possibilities for plot are great. The PDF looks at plot for "Normal People" and there are samples in literature where you might have a non-powered cop in a world full of super powers, of Police and Rescue, of Government and Military and, of course, of Superheroes too.
Mutatis Mutandis is well written and interesting. It pitches the possibilities of the setting in such a positive, believable and tempting way that I suspect many doubters will become converts. Mutatis Matandis, the third minigame, is certainly worth checking out and so are The Other Side the first and The Book of Guilds the second in the series.
* This Mutatis Mutandis: Minigame issue #3 review was first published on GameWyrd.
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