Mutants and Masterminds?

[ShinHakkaider]

edited: Pointless response.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Back on topic...

I recommend checking out Emerald Knights #0. It's free and kicks of a mini-campaign (the other adventures are not free, but even if you don't use these, it's a good adventure to start a game of M&M).

For NPCs I'd also take a look at Threat Reports, which is available as .pdfs with individual villains, or collected in paperback.

And finally one encounter building, its not quite as rigid as D&D. There's a genre assumption that sometimes the villains will beat the PCs, and losing should rarely result in actual death.

 

[MichaelSomething]

One knock against M&M is that it's easy to make very powerful characters that steam roll anything a GM can throw at a party. A GM who once ran a M&M campaign once said, "I hate ALL your characters!"

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think M&M is the ultimate superhero builder's game. Not sure about playing.

 

[billd91]

One knock against M&M is that it's easy to make very powerful characters that steam roll anything a GM can throw at a party. A GM who once ran a M&M campaign once said, "I hate ALL your characters!"

This is one reason that point-buy games like M&M and Champions generally encourage the GM to be involved in character generation and watching for issues.

 

[billd91]

I think M&M is the ultimate superhero builder's game. Not sure about playing.

It plays pretty well. The damage save mechanic and relatively easy recovery fit the genre pretty well.

But ultimately I think Champions is still the ultimate superhero builder's game because of the many subtle ways to model characters that Champions handles. For example, there was an article back in Different Worlds that had the X-Men (circa X-Men 150ish) built out with Champions rules. The notes on Cyclops were very interesting. He was built with a powerful energy blast (obviously) but with its otherwise ferocious END cost handled by a solar-regenerating endurance battery. Most other superhero games, even M&M, would probably just give him a power/energy blast of some sort and not worry about powering it. But Champions managed to capture subtle elements of Cyclops that matched the comics, particularly X-Men Annual #3, very well.

Mutants and Masterminds takes at least one step back from that level of detail and, frankly, I'm happier for it.

 

[humble minion]

Yeah, I'd agree with the general consensus.

I like M&M a lot, and the damage save mechanic works really well as a genre simulation rule, plus it's quite cinematic and the progression table almost requires a relatively narrative-based rather than battlemat-centric approach to combat and action scenes. It can be easy to break or to do ridiculous things though - multiple (10x or more) stacking of the Progression power feat can lead to horribly broken results, for instance, and using a Hero Point to temporarily gain the Alternate Power feat (especially when attached to a flexible power, like Magic for instance) can lead to baddies getting one-shotted as the PC tailors their attack exactly to the baddie's weaknesses and the current situation. From limited experience, Champions is a more powerful, rigorous and exploit-resistant system, but also runs a lot slower and requires more bookkeeping. Given the choice, and a group of players I could rely on to not try for the game-breaking stuff, I'd personally go with M&M.

Worth mentioning I've only really played M&M 2e, so can only comment on that. Apparently the stun-lock issues (bad guy gets stunned by an attack, therefore is more susceptible to being stunned by subsequent attacks, so ends up never being able to do anything but reel as he gets pummelled into the ground) and so on which hampered 2e have been addressed in 3e, which is good news if true.