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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011576" data-attributes="member: 172">Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1Mutants & 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 LookMutants & 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 LookMutants & 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.ConclusionsThough 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</blockquote>

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