Mutants and Masterminds Annual #1

[billd91]

The Mutants and Masterminds Annual (Listed as #1 on their website, in anticipation of futher publications I hope) is broken up into several varying chapters and so the whole product seems designed to capture the interest of a broad segment of MnM players and GMs. For the most part, these chapters are pretty high quality even if not really applicable for all campaigns.

The first six chapters are campaign idea generators, focusing on different types of campaigns and with varying levels of detail. Most of them focus on the general Freedom City campaign as the main backdrop and then tweak it for each chapter's specific focus.

Street Justice by Keith Baker looks at hero campaigns down at the street level with generally lower-powered heroes. It includes a number of suggestions to help the GM set the tone of the campaign and provide ideas on how street-level heroes may interact with their surroundings. This chapter includes a significant Rogues Gallery with villians like The Monkey, Death and Taxes, The Meek, Esquire, and the Scarlet Lady. The villains in the gallery enhance the grittier feel of the street campaign pretty nicely.

Against the Gods by Rodney Thompson is a bit of a more unusual campaign idea. This chapter is about incorporating gods and heroes, specifically Greek, into the campaign. Freedom City already does this with Daedalus and Medea, and so the Greek gods are a pretty natural choice. There are sample characters detailing what Hercules and Achilles might be like as superheroes and a variety of mythic creatures detailed into stat blocks. And, of course, what would a discussion about Greek heroes be without a primary antagonist. There are plenty of good ones to choose from in pop culture, and this one went with Hades.

Legacy Comics by Steven E. Schend is probably the most butt-kicking of these campaign chapters. It focuses on superhero legacies whether those legacies be by name, reputation, family, powers or anything else that might be handed down by some hero to a worthy (or unworthy) successor. While that's interesting in and of itself, what really makes this chapter stand out is the handling of the sample heroes that can be used for modern legacies: The Allies of Freedom. The characters, golden-age World War II fighters in the same mold as the Invaders from Marvel Comics, are very creatively written up with interesting backgrounds and hooks into their legacies in the modern age. This section is almost a good teaser for Foes of Freedom, coming out in the (hopefully) not too distant future with some of the villains mentioned in this chapter. There are write-ups on Human Tank and Gunner, Lady Celtic, Rogue Fox, Sarge Shrapnel, Spitfire Jones, White Rose, and White Thorn. These are all very interesting, but what really struck me was the density of interesting ideas in this chapter for my own MnM campaign. As I was reading the chapter, I kept coming up with more ideas with which to torment my players. It was a very thought provoking chapter.

The Freedom League by Steven Kenson follows, fitting neatly into chronology with the Legacy chapter, and focuses on the Freedom League after the war and before the Terminus Invasion. We get write-ups on Arrow III, Black Avenger, Bowman III, Brainstorm, Halogen, Tectonic, Scarab, Lady Liberty II, Pseudo, Raven, Sea King, Star Knight, and the man himself, Superm... whoops, Centurion. Between these two chapters, you start to get the feel for the life of superheroing in and around Freedom City in the 20th century. I was, again, finding lots of interesting grist for my home campaign's mill. But then, I am running in Freedom City.
The Claremont Academy by Steve Kenson takes a bit of a step back from specifically laying out hero stats and instead focuses more on appropriate tone and story elements for a heroes-in-school type of campaign. As such, it's a bit more of a general ideas chapter and less strongly wedded to the Freedom City setting.

A Bright and Shining Future - Freedom City 2525 by Christopher McGlothlin takes it's cue from the old Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes comics (one of my favorite titles from the 1980s). There are ideas on what FC of 2525 might be like as well as a bunch of heroes like Charger, Chiller, Clockwatcher, Colonel Colossus, Metalla, Professor Danger, Solarflare, and the new Star Knight. This chapter also includes a few future villians as well.

The chapters that follow the campaign setting/style chapters cover more of the general running of the game with some clarifications and rule variants.

With Great Power by Steve Kenson details power creation, the use of extras, the use of power stunts, and includes a few detailed examples of power construction. A useful chapter for those of us who are a little unclear on exactly how some power costs work out.

Weaknesses (with a spash page called Bowman and Arrow) by Jason Orman covers varying levels of weaknesses ranging from 2, 5, and 10 point levels. This will come in handy for GMs looking for a bit more granularity in their weaknesses.

In Shining Armor Arrayed by Shawn Carman includes a variety of pre-generated powered armor suits, for a variety of legal and illegal applications.

Superhero Smackdown by Steve Kenson introduces the option rule of allowing Attacks of Opportunity into MnM. There are feats to make use of or avoid the penalties of AoO like in D&D. THere are also a variety of damage variants to tweak how GMs want superhero combat to play out. The ideas here can be used to alternatively speed up or slow down combat as well as make it a little less susceptible to initial poor dice rolls.

The Quality of Heroes by Steve Kenson takes an alternative look at Hero Points. Rather than having PCs loaded up on them at the beginning of an adventure, this chapter provides ideas on how to start with 0 HPs and go up from there are heroes face adversity and build to a climactic battle with the supervillain.

Capers is the final chapter and it includes 5 2-page adventure outlines by Jason Orman, Rodney Thompson, Warren Banks, Shawn Carman, and Toren Atkinson. These are, for the most part, quick and dirty encounters that any GM can pop into their campaign with a minimum of preparation. Most involve a single villain with several minions.

Finally, at the very end after the other licensing information, is the current errata.

Whew. There's a fair amount here. The setting chapters are, themselves, pretty short so they don't have a lot of time to spend on real breadth and details. Think of these as magazine articles and you'll have your expectations set right for content. What they do, really, is provide a little detail, a few examples, a little bit of tone, and then send you off and running to do the rest of the work for your own campaign as an exercise. Personally, as an experienced gamer and GM, I appreciate that. I like frameworks that I can fill in to fit my mood. As such, I could make use of any and all of these chapters.
For those GMs who prefer a bit more detail, you'll probably find the Legacy and Freedom League chapters the most satisfying as they have some pretty meaty chunks of detail. Gearheads who find their prep time running short will probably appreciate the chapter on armor. Combat tacticians will probably enjoy the bits on AoO and the additional complexity that brings. And rule tinkerers and story-tellers will probably find common ground in the chapter on hero points.

Overall, I'd say the sourcebook is a darn fine addition to the collection of MnM books currently out there. If we had fractional ratings, I'd give it a 4.5. I think to have gotten a 5 rating from me, this book would have had to push the envelope a little bit more on some of the optional rules with a little more discussion about the implications of the changes and how a GM can use some of the options in combination to customize the campaign. I think I'd have also liked examples of whole character creation rather than just powers and handling of touchy spots in the rules like some of the more unusual powers and how to better cope with them.

But overall, I'm quite satisfied with my purchase. The book itself is lavishly illustrated by a number of artists and the cartography in the Capers is really sharp. And I'll be plumbing the book for ideas for many adventures to come.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

From the Green Ronin website:

The Mutants & Masterminds Annual celebrates the game’s first spectacular year. Its 128 pages are packed with new rules, options, and setting information, including expanded rules for power creation, weaknesses, battle suits, and hero points. Look back on World War II heroes in Legacy and into the future with Freedom City 2525. Steve Kenson leads up a design team that includes former Marvel Super Heroes RPG developer Steven E. Schend, Wizards of the Coast setting search winner Keith Baker, and Time of Crisis author Christopher McGlothlin. This is the book Mutants & Masterminds players have been waiting for!

 

[Macbeth]

Mutants and Masterminds Annual #1 is a full color supplement for the Mutants and Masterminds game by Green Ronin. It retails for approximately $25.

First off, let me point out that a good amount of the material in this book has to do with the Freedom City setting produced by Green Ronin. It is not, in my opinion, made clear enough that some of the material refferences Freedom City. Luckily, the material is still easilly understood, with the references to Freedom City coming with enough context that I feel the book can definately be used without the setting. I have not read Freedom City, but I still found the book extremely usefull.

Mutants and Masterminds Annual is more of book then I expected. This is not some little magazine, it is a series of articles that can really add to your game. Highlights include an article on low-powered, Mystery Men-style game with PL 5 heros by Keith Baker, who created the Ebberon setting for Wizards of the Coast.

As has come to be standard for Mutants and Masterminds material (and Green Ronin in general) the art is a perfect fit for the subject. I felt some of the art didn't hold up to the high standard set by Mutants and Masterminds and Crooks!, but all of the art stays very true to comic standards, and provides a great feel for the book. Each article has it's own artist, so each article has art that well matches the subject matter of that article.

Instead of picking apart each and every artcile, I'll instead give notes on articles that particularly stood out to me, for whatever reason. A slight complaint is that not all of the artcile names are easy to find, since each article starts with a full page piece art. I'll reference articles primarily by theme, not name, since without prominant titles, the subject is the easiest thing to identfity the artciles by.

Street Level Heros: Keith Baker is proving himself to be a quite capable writer. This article takes a look at low-power heros, people who still fear an average gun. I found it to be well written, insightfull, and usefull. It does reference characters and locations in Freedom City, but it is easy enough to extrapolate the important information on the setting from the article. In addition to discussion of how to run a street level campaign (PL 5), the artcile provides several low level threats, most of them involving some kid of moral dillema for the players. The article focuses on a slightly darker tone then the average Mutants and Masterminds campaign, presenting moral dillemas a-plenty.

Legacies: This article looks into how a hero lives on even after death or retirement. The disscusion of legacies in general seems a bit to obvious, but the examples that follow are excellent. The second part of the artcile detail WWII era heros The Allies of Freedom. Here the article really shines, describing an interesting group of heros, complete with stats, and how their legacy lives on. While the disscusion of legacies was decent, the characters here are truly interesting. The article makes a few references to Freedom City, but it is easilly used without it.

Freedom League: Here we take a look at past members of the Freedom League, a JLA-style group of heros in Freedom City. Each past member is stated out and described. Overall, this section is filled with good ideas, but unless you actually use the Freedom League, it looses some of it's value. The art that opens this section deserves special mention for being a take-off on the Super Friends TV show.

Mechanics: THere are a number of articles on purely mechanical issues, such as hero points and power design. These rules are obvioulsy useable by anybody, with or without Freedom City. I found the expanded power creation rules to be particularly interesting. The writers do a good job of making the articles readable and usefull.

Power Suits: THis section describes a number of powered armor suits in the style of Iron Man and other armored heros. The artcile itself is good, but the art is a little too loose for my tastes.

Plots: The last section of the book is a number of plots nominaly set in Freedom City, but easly used elsewhere. Most of the plots are fairly straight forward, but they are interesting and useable. Each plot comes with a stated villian and all the nessecary maps. I could see these easily being used as introductory adventures or short one night adventures.

The above artciles are the ones that most stood out to me, but other topics include running a Super Hero school campiagn and Mythical heros. Overall the book is incredibly usefull. The presentation is top notch.

My only complaints about the book are fairly mild. First, a little too much material is Freedom City specific, but this is easily overlooked. Some of the art falls short, but for the most part the art is top notch. Probably my biggest complaint is the price, but given the high production values, a high price is understandable. I would have liked to see more depth in some of the articles, but with the book already having a high price more depth (and therefore more pages) would make one problem beter while making another worse.

My Score: 4 Stars (Good). This book has only a few very minor flaws, and would make a valuable addition to any Mutants and Masterminds player's collection.

 

[Psion]

Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1

Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is a potpouri of material for Mutants & Mastermind. The title and appearance is a homage to king sized yearly comic issues that appeared in various comic series (primarily Marvel). The book is essentially an anothology of "articles" that discuss different campaign models and classic comic book conventions for Mutants & Mastermind, complete with campaign advice, sample characters, and new rules.

The book is published by Green Ronin, and directed by Super Unicorn Design Studio. Design credits include Steve Kenson, Toren Atkinson, Keith Baker, Warren C. Banks, Shawn Carman, Christopher McGlothlin, Jason Orman, Steven E. Schend, and Rodney Thompson.

A First Look

Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is a 128-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $24.95. For a full color book of this size, the price is competitive.

The cover is done in a style that pays homage to "super size" issues of comics, with big block letters and bubbles of characters featured in the book. The cover art is by Karl Waller with colors by Michael Atiyeh.

Interior art credits include Greg Kirkpatrick, "Rey" Lewis, Geoff Ong, Axel Ortiz, Ramon Perez, Rick Remender, Andy Smith, Craig Tallefer, and Christopher West. Some of the art is not quite up to the standards seen in earlier M&M books, but in some cases I think that is intentional. For example, some illustrations have a rough style that seems to be a homage to 70s era Saturday morning cartoons.

A Deeper Look

Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is divided into a number of topical "articles" or chapters. The first half or so of these are primarily variant campaign models (primarily with information for the Freedom City setting, but usable for settings of your choice), while the later articles are primarily rules options and other materials.

Each chapter is presented as a distinct story with a cover page, making the book come across as a sort of anthology. Each of these is depicted as a different hypothetical comic title related to the subject matter.

The "campaign model" sections (and their approximate composition) are as follows:

-Street Justice: Discusses "street level" supers campaigns. Provides advice and insight on PL5 heroes and how they differ in play from the standard PL10 types. The section discusses different spins of this gritty, low powered campaign model and some of the moral conundrums that such heroes are likely to face. Villains include the monkey (genius experiment borne drug pusher monkey), Death and Taxes, and the Meek.
-Against the Gods: This section, a bit longer on character examples, discusses campaigns inspired by myths of heroes and gods (much as various comics, primarily Thor). Sample characters include heroes and villains (such as Hades).
-All Legacy Comics: A number of frequent references to unseen heroes that date back to WWII are included in Freedom City. Those curious finally get to see the stats and history of some of these early heroes unveiled. The thrust of this section is analyzing role playing opportunities (with a light sprinkling of rules suggestions) for characters that follow in the footsteps of other heroes. Very little advice is given regarding character design when you are designing characters in such a situation, however (while you might guess they would have some attributes similar to their forebears, I expected a little more advice.)
-Freedom League: This section is less a campaign model than the preceding sections and more a Freedom City expansion. The chapter covers the history of the Freedom League and provides the history and status of previous members. Many are inactive but could have a stake in future adventures; the disposition of one is left mysterious for an enterprising GM to expound upon.
-The Claremont Academy: This section highlights the "teen and juvenile hero" subgenre that became popular in the 80s and 90s. About half of this section is dedicated to describing Freedom City's Claremont Academy. The reminder is a nice variety of ideas for running games involving student heroes.
-A Bright and Shining Future: Freedom City 2525: Much of Freedom City is a homage. This particular section turns its lens of homage to another target: The Legion of Super-heroes (a personal favorite of mine.) The homage team here is called The Freedom Legion, and they live in the far future of Freedom City. Much of the art is very reminiscent of the LSH indeed. In addition to a rundown of Freedom City's major features in 2525 and sample legion characters, some sample villains and plots are provided as well.

At this point (about 2/3 towards the book) the chapters turn away from campaign variants and more towards rules resources:
-With Great Power: This section is an expanded version of the power creation guidelines in the Mutants & Masterminds core book. The section looks at the intentions behind what a rank of power can provides, nuances of creating powers, and a few samples of power creation.
-Bowman & Arrow: Okay, the relation of the title to topic is not too obvious here unless you see the cover, which depict Arrow with drugs and alcohol arrayed in front of him while an astonished Bowman looks on. The section is about weaknesses, and takes the standard weakness rules and adds some gradation to them (splitting them into minor, moderate, and major powers and providing several examples and benchmarks.) This is overdue, and the treatment of weaknesses in the M&M core rulebook is arguably inadequate compared to other Supers RPGs out there. Still, it does leave it a bit behind the power curve, as many games such as the Vampire: The Requiem, Spycraft, and Vigilance use an arguably superior method: per-incident compensation for weaknesses.
-In Shining Armor Arrayed: This section is all about powered armor and its design. The author makes the valid argument that as armor is such a staple in supers comics, it is easy to get stuck in a rut, and provides a number of specialized, purpose built powered armor designs. The GM could use these as distinctive villains or allies in a game, or a player might use them as the basis for a hero.
-Super Hero Smack Down: This section provides a number of rules options for combat. One variant you may be familiar with: attacks of opportunity. In addition to a refresher on this rules that most familiar with d20 should be familiar with, but a number of feats involving the concept are introduced (or reintroduced). Most of the remaining rules options are suggestions for tweaks to the damage rules to get a feel or flow more like what a GM may be looking for, such as forbidding one-hit knockouts or varying the number of hits needed to take a target down for dramatic tension (a bit of narrative flow control technique.)
-The Quality of Heroes: This section regards Hero Points and introduces still more (and deeper) techniques for narrative flow control. The major idea here is that instead of giving characters a standard allotment of hero points at the beginning of a game, a character acquires hero points whenever they face adversity, eventually having a handful of them by the time for the climax comes around.
-Capers: This section is a collection of quick scenarios (primarily set in Freedom City) for use with Mutants & Masterminds. Each scenario includes villains statistics and maps.

Finally, for the benefit of those that never visit the website, the book contains a recent selection of errata for the game.

Conclusions

Though not as essential or awe-inspiring as some M&M books, Annual #1 is a nice sourcebook for Mutants & Masterminds GMs (and to a lesser extent, players), particularly those using Freedom City, though many of the campaign model notes could apply to a variety of supers settings. The biggest strength of this book is the campaign model variants, though the rules ideas are nice for those wanting a slightly more narrative twist on the rules.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Khur]

Initiative Round
Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is a sourcebook of new material and ideas for the Mutants & Masterminds milieu. It’s a full-color, 128-page book with a soft cover—the page count including three title pages, two pages of contributor bios, and an ad for Crooks. Current (as of April 2004) errata for Mutants & Masterminds takes four pages. The writers include M&M’s creator Steve Kenson and eight other notables, such as Eberron-creator Keith Baker. (More will be provided on the authors as their particular sections are delineated.) The book retails for $24.95.

The sourcebook’s layout and art largely measures up to its predecessors in the Mutants & Masterminds link. Largely, because much of the art in Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is great, but some shows a lack of skill with heroic composition, while other pieces are downright bad. In one section of the book (“In Shining Armor Arrayed”), the poorly composed and badly rendered art shows off its colors as if the printing plates were misaligned, but a look at the text and page headers indicates this isn’t the case. The maps for the volume’s five adventures, on the other hand, are immaculately executed by the talented Christopher West.

The first section of the book is on low-powered supers, and its inspiring words are dealt with in Critical Hit below.

Less inspired is Rodney Thompson’s article, “Against the Gods”. Here we have mythic archetypes, centered solely on the Greek mythos. Mythological references have their place in superhero stories, sure, but a broader treatment surely could have been rendered here. Instead, the article presents Hercules, Ulysses, and Achilles as modern-age heroes, along with creatures from Greek myth as possible foes, and a brief touch on some themes that might be garnered from classical mythology. The biggest letdown, other than he’s the only true villain in the article, is the use of Hades as a baddie with little more purpose than stereotypical avarice. Freedom City’s use of Hades as in this manner doesn’t make the idea work any better here. This sort of thing shows how “Against the Gods” tends toward the shallow end of inspiration that myth can provide. The myths themselves have far more possibilities for conflict, with amorality enough to go around from the insatiably lustful Zeus to the murderous and sometimes cowardly Ares, god of war.

War is the focus of Steven Schend’s article, although the work claims to be based on power legacies—the meaning of taking up the name, powers, and/or purposes of another (usually deceased) super-being. The strength of this piece is its ideas for generating character origins and giving meaning to a hero’s suite of abilities, heritage, or even name. To facilitate turning those mental gears, Schend provides us with a historic super team, a multinational group of supers who took it to the Reich in World War II: The Allies of Freedom. One might argue that Schend spends entirely too much time rendering the members of the Allies of Freedom, since all except one are now dead. It seems, though, that this rendering provides not only a basis for players to ground their legacy-bearing characters solidly in the past of the imaginary world in which Freedom City lies, but it also opens up the doorway to roleplaying WWII-era supers. This last possibility is hampered only by the fact that this supplement contains none of the bad guys mentioned in the article (and no reference to where they might appear if they’re in another sourcebook) nor does it contain any statistics for more mundane opponents.

Similar discussions about utility might find their way into a debate on Steve Kenson’s article detailing the history Freedom League. While the notes on the League’s HQ are certainly valuable, there’s no map and no real detail. The characters of the article are all inactive or deceased members of the Freedom League. It is useful to have these characters in relation to Schend’s earlier article on legacies, for roleplaying possibilities with inactive heroes, and a GM can always use statistics for a hero or villain with another name. Repeating one idea for the use of the League in relation to a homebrew campaign twice (branch League teams), the article reads more like notes that were cut from Freedom City than an individual piece.

More solid is Kenson’s treatment of the Claremont Academy, even though the school is based in Freedom City as well. This private school doubles as an academy for the super powered, even supporting its own teen super group. (Yes, this is all very Professor Xavier and the New Mutants,, but the stereotypes and themes of comics are things that bring us to the gaming table to play Mutants & Masterminds.) The real winners in this presentation are the guidelines for teen-themed capers, campaigns, and “after-school” specials dealing with teen issues. Kenson provides the basics for players and GMs to consider for teen heroes, which can be very helpful to those of us who’ve not been teenagers for a while. The teen supers theme offers another opportunity for low-powered gaming, as well as providing some options for flashbacks (or age regression) for PL-10+ PCs. “Claremont Academy” suffers from a bit of unnecessary repetition and falters with its “see Freedom City” references, but it’s a strong idea with some excellent tools and options for creating “school daze” with mutants (or wizards, or exceptional humans, or …you get the picture).

Chris McGlothlin takes alternate themes to the extreme in Freedom City 2525—an article on a wide-open future with galaxy-spanning options and even some uses for time travel from present-day Freedom city. McGlothlin’s writing entertains. Although the section, once again, relies on Freedom City, this time it’s as a basis for a universe opened by faster-than-light travel and a common cause. Earth is united and part of a planetary confederation united against the Grue threat. The Freedom League has all new power as the Freedom Legion, a group of heroes that defends and inspires the galaxy. Of the heroes, the most interesting is the enigmatic and perfectly named Clockwatcher. The villains, however, are a bit lackluster in their usualness, such as a would-be galactic conqueror (Vorgol), a cult of “unity” with a questionable purpose (The Unification Movement), and a machine who wants to rid the universe of biological life (Deus ex Machina). What’s most disappointing, however, is the complete lack of artwork for any of the villains.

Perhaps it might have been better to put art into the “Freedom City 2525” section’s villains and leave the largely meaningless (but not bad) art out of “With Great Power” by Steve Kenson. This expansion on creating super powers in the Mutants & Masterminds game is great, adding depth and clarity to an already good system. In this section, there are more a clearer options for creating powers or modifying the ones in Mutants & Masterminds. One of the best, and most obviously needed, is an option that allows a power to be constructed with fractional power point cost, opening up the possibility of highly flawed super powers—great for a grittier game. More choices and flexibility. Yum!

Jason Orman lends a similar level of flexibility to weaknesses, which were a particularly feeble part of the original Mutants & Masterminds, with his chapter of the Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1. The section takes the basic weaknesses found in M&M and expands upon them. Where possible, each weakness is given a level of severity and an associated power-point bonus (+2 for minor, +5 for moderate, and +10 for major)—the original portion of the rules that dealt with weaknesses gave a simple 10-point bonus for each one. Orman’s presentation isn’t a big leap, being more like how the weaknesses should have appeared in the game to begin with if they had been given due consideration. This perception is reinforced by the fact that this chapter only adds dimension to the weaknesses already listed in Mutants & Masterminds without adding any new ones to the list.

“In Shining Armor Arrayed” does just the opposite, adding 27 specific new armor suits to the possible gear for heroes, villains, or their lackeys. That list of armor, which consists of three variations each on nine differing themes, isn’t the strong suit (pardon the pun) of author Shawn Carmen’s article (nor is it in any way a bad part). The section’s biggest boons are the ideas and guidelines given for conceptualizing and constructing a battlesuit super, escaping the formulaic flying armor with blasters and super-strength. New options round out this conceptual base. Instead of mimicking Cyclone or Marvel’s Iron Man, consider mystical armor or a symbiotic organism that forms a battlesuit-like shell over its host.

Following the original ideas for protection comes some old and new ideas for handling super combat—Steve Kenson’s “Superhero Smackdown!” This section starts out by adding attacks of opportunity to the Mutants & Masterminds combat options. One could argue that anyone familiar with d20 doesn’t need these rules repeated here, but the fact that these rules aren’t in the Mutants & Masterminds rulebook (and the fact that M& M is OGL, not d20, compliant) makes them a viable option. The only strange thing about them is that Kenson suggests attacks of opportunity add “realism” to combat, whereas they really seem to be a further abstraction in an abstract system. That said, “Superhero Smackdown!” also adds more than a few optional variants to handling damage using the systems outlined in the Mutants & Masterminds rules. You want to make it harder to score kills or knockouts? Your rules are here. You want to make it easier? Got you covered. In fact, Kenson provides sliding scales and ideas for changing damage based on its importance in portions of a scenario. There’s probably an idea here that will suit anyone.

A final section, also rich in ideas, is dealt with in Critical Hit, below.

The rest of the book’s meat is taken up by five two-page adventures. All the capers are adequate treatments of one-shot conflicts with just enough detail to get the game rolling. Each includes a plot, notes on the location, a single (usually two-dimensional) villain with applicable minions, and a few paragraphs on further adventures. In most cases, the details are left up to the GM, such as the contents of some mystical tablets or the origin of a cryogenic, mind-control device. The maps are like the capers, serviceable but with no specific encounter areas and an incomplete view of possible terrain and areas of conflict. This flaw has nothing really to do with the cartographer. It has to do with the design and production of the book. Far from complete, as suggested by the back of the book, these adventures are sketches for a GM to fill in before play (hopefully making one or more of these villains more than an avaricious fool or a madman). This isn’t necessarily a huge flaw, since most GMs need to tinker a bit to get a published caper into their campaigns and ideas are often the hard part of GMing.

Critical Hit
Keith Baker, showing his love of noir yet again, brings us the idea of power-level-5 (PL 5) heroes in a power-level-10 (PL 10) world. Freedom City has its seedier side and its downtrodden. Somebody’s got to watch the ’hood while the Freedom League is watching out for alien invasions, right? Keith’s take on life at PL 5 is gritty and flavorful, with colorful villains like the murderous Death and Taxes, vigilantes-for-God called the Meek, and The Monkey—once a lab animal, now a psychotic pharmacist and drug dealer. (Yes, he’s a real monkey—brilliant and evil, but still a monkey.) Keith’s ideas, for working-class supers and those who just don’t want to use their powers (but are sometimes forced to), spark a vital possibility with the Mutants & Masterminds rules. This stuff, though loosely woven with Freedom City references, can easily be used for entire campaigns where no PL-10 heroes exist, excepting those who clawed their way to the top of the heap. It calls to mind the gang kids building a new Bat Cave at the close of Frank Miller’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns.

Kenson adds a new possibility to how heroes might acquire Hero Points in “The Quality of Heroes.” Instead of simply gaining hero points based on power level, a hero gains using this system gains points based on struggles and failures. The technique has interesting ramifications, not the least of which is to encourage players to take more risks with their characters— misfortune leads to more heroic determination to push forward or, in game terms, a Hero Point. A character might also gain Hero Points in place of power points when taking a weakness, for successfully roleplaying through a subplot central to the character’s background, or other in-game (but not necessarily immediately advantageous) actions. Also included is a very neat way that a hero might slip into villainy, working much like the dark side in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game .

Critical Fumble
Printed in China.

Now that my misplaced personal politicking is out of the way, the real problem with Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is that it basically requires Green Ronin’s Freedom City supplement for full utility. Most of the articles mention this or that aspect of Freedom City, or place their action in Freedom City, or even alter Freedom City in some way. If you don’t own Freedom City, you’re out of luck. It’s unfortunate, too, because many of the articles that mention Freedom City didn’t have to do so or could have integrated the setting in a less intrusive way. At least the marketing information on the back of the book warns the potential buyer of the Freedom City bias, but the writers here missed some opportunities to take Mutants & Masterminds to a level the average player might not have already thought of.

For example, Keith Baker’s “Street Justice” piece is great for its basic ideas but not its ties to Freedom City. Gritty heroics and noir bleakness lose their hard edge in a world where world-shaking superheroes live in a four-color world that’s ten minutes down the expressway. The only reason those heroes don’t intervene is that street-level crime is somehow beneath them—and if the going gets really rough in any meaningful way on the street, the Freedom League can’t be too long in coming to the rescue. To some, perhaps that makes street justice all the more dark and poignant. Others would say these facts simply render street justice insignificant or even depressingly meaningless.

Coup de Grace
Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is a good effort and a nice-looking book, with very few technical errors. The game mechanics appear good, but this reviewer did not analyze every character for flaws. All of the mechanics and information relevant to expanding the Mutants & Masterminds game are open content, but not the phrases Hero Points, Villain Points, Power Points along with all specific character and place names. (So you can use Clockwatcher’s stats in your product, but not his impressive name.) A lot of this stuff has been seen before, if one has familiarity with the comics world. While that is a strength in some ways, familiarity breeding interest, it also dings the originality score. The book is both for players and GMs, but it leans heavily toward the latter camp and suffers from internal references to the Freedom City sourcebook. Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 is reasonably priced for its production quality and content, but it’s more like getting a spare cape for your costume. It’s shiny and new, but it doesn’t really add anything essential to your abilities. If you like the things you see in the brief synopses above, however, this “128-page super-spectacular” is for you.

Review originally appeared at d20 Magazine Rack.

 

[GameWyrd]

Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1

Mutants and Masterminds is a rare RPG product. It started well. There are now lots of supplements for it. Mutants and Masterminds is still going well. This review looks at the first Mutants & Masterminds Annual.

If this supplement was just a list of more heroes or a pre-set adventure then it would... well, it would be just another supplement rather than an annual. The word "Annual" implies (at least to me) that if you're going to buy one Mutants & Masterminds addition in the year then buy this one.

In fact we get Annual type material from Annual #1. It's a hit. For example, the last couple of pages in the book are an errata for Mutants & Masterminds. Who knew the book contained so many errors? It looked so good to me!

Street Justice is my kind of thing. Here we find the gritty bits of low powered hero games. Characters are stronger, faster and tougher than most people. Characters may well have unusual powers but at this level bullets won't bounce off them and thugs lunging out of shadows with machetes are a threat. In Mutants & Masterminds terms this is the Power Level 5 range. This isn't just a look at what these heroes can and cannot do but also how they can fit into Freedom City. Here we cut to the heart of the issue. It is tricky fitting all sorts of power levels into Freedom City at once. I think Street Justice could have found more time for that and cut down on the list of villains for the power level. There are nice sections in the vein of Morality and Mortality; those shades of grey which never appear in four colour comics but which I think makes the gritty hero genres so enthralling.

There's a look at deities in "Against the Gods". This is another stable of super hero gaming and other step away from the usual four colour theme that Mutants & Masterminds usually sticks too. In truth the Greek Pantheon are key to Freedom City and the heroes therein. It was Hades who attacked the city with his army of undead warriors which had the original heroes of the Liberty League. There's more on that story later in Annual in the Freedom League section. In "Against the Gods" has stats for Hades. Whereas God stats always seem like mixed blessings in other roleplaying games they seem entirely appropriate here. Hades is a powerful force indeed! On the other side of the battle we've histories and stats for Hercules, Ulysses and Achilles. If you're a fan of the Greek myths then the stats for Cerberus, Harrpies, the Hydra and Sirens present in the book are likely to be a useful asset.

In Legacy we look backwards so we can look forward again. This section looks at heroes of yesteryear. Here we have the hero info-dump but it does have extra weight as it is tied in with the Freedom City setting. As is typical of historic heroes a lot of these NPCs are American Second World War stars; Gunner, The Human Tank, Sarge Shrapnel, ... The Mutants & Masterminds Annual does very well, at least in this European's opinion, and there's a wider birth of heroes from the era. Lady Celtic and Spitfire Jones are British. Better still; there are German heroes. The White Rose (Die Weisee Rose) and White Thorn (Die Weisser Dorn) are both great characters in their own right and I think are a decent summary of the wonderful way Mutants & Masterminds blends academic comic book appreciation with game play.

In terms of all-round-usefulness "The Freedom League" is right up there. This chapter, even if it is only ten or so pages long, contains a wealth of information. Here we chronicle the rise of the current heroes in Freedom City and look at the why-fors and how-comes. The "Liberty League" is a legally protected name - hence the Freedom League. As with the Legacy chapter we have a large list of hero NPCs here. As with the Legacy chapter there are overtures to elsewhere in the book. Raven, for example, a hero who once fought with the Freedom League but is now the headmaster of the Claremont Academy.

I just can't shake the X-Men Evolution feel from The Claremont Academy. This is the college where teenage heroes learn, spawn adventures and angst or ally as the style of game play sees fit.

We've been dabbling in different styles of superhero game play here. There are a few more and the Annual has space to look at Freedom City in the future. Freedom City 2525 is very much an excuse to show case even more heroes and villains - with the accompanying quality illustrations - rather than a real look at what the future holds. In fact it is easy for the Annual to almost casually introduce the Freedom City 2525 setting as there can be many different possible futures. That option fits in nicely with the genre. In fact, I quite look forwarded to reading about another future for Freedom City in the next Annual!

There's more in the Annual then just tours of sub-genres and a splash of heroes from each. There's an extended look at Power Creation rules. The gambit runs from secondary effects to flaws and the cost variations for each.

I like the idea of weaknesses in power. Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 has statis for Achilles so it's perhaps appropriate it includes the Achilles' heal for powers. In fact the book suggests suitable Achilles' heals for superheroes in general. There are a few pages on Weaknesses. The book suggests that there should be points back for the adoption of weakness. GMs, as ever, will need to watch this closely.

There are power ups for heroes in the book too; quite a lot actually. "In Shining Armor Arrayed" covers the creation and rules for superhero suitable armour. "Superhero Smackdown!" looks at combat for supers. The usual suspects line up here; Attacks of Opportunity and Feats, for example. "The Quality of Heroes" looks at those all important but often very tricky Hero Points. In particular Annual #1 discusses new ways in which heroes can acquire Hero Points. Again, GMs will need to watch closely and ensure the system is not abused.

There is a small adventure in the annual too.

The Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 looks and feels like a Mutants & Masterminds product. It's slick and smooth. It's colourful and entertaining. That said it's not without error, the contents page is miss-aligned and page numbers don't match chapter headings.

The Annual is a must for all Mutants & Masterminds fanatics. It's a strong buy for all Mutant & Mastermind owners. If you've built your own Freedom City setting or aren't using it at all then the Annual is much less tempting. It is the last third of the book which has the widest scope.

I really enjoyed Annual #1. It is one of those books where the pages turn themselves. I'm just slightly suspicious I won't be able use everything from it. It's also one of those supplements where I'm not sure whether players should be allowed to read or not.

* This Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1 was first posted at GameWyrd.

 

[Particle_Man]

X-men feel intentional

"I just can't shake the X-Men Evolution feel from The Claremont Academy."

Since Chris Claremont was one of the major writers for X-Men back in the day, I imagine this was quite intentional.