Mutants & Masterminds Character Gen Time?

[John Crichton]

I'm going to be running my first M&M game this Saturday for a group of 5 players. None of the participants have much experience with the game at all. There is another GM present who owns the main book (that I am borrowing) and maybe one of the other players knows something about it. 2 of the players have never even seen it before.

I am buying the main book right now and will have it by the weekend. So, there will be a total of 2 main books for the 6 of us (yikes, I know).

So, how long will character gen take us? I was hoping to get it done within 5 hours. Additionallly, I was thinking of making photocopies of the powers section and collecting them at the end of character gen (I expect the copies to stink as my copier has toner issues but they should get the job done). I almost bought a second core book but the price is a bit high and I am short on funds this month.

Taking into account the amount of books present (assume just the 2 books as the photocopy thing is just a thought and there are probably copyright issues and the like), the familiarity with the system (I have read the book and know it well but will need to reference it a good deal, I expect) and the amount of players what should I expect the character gen time to be?

Oh, I should note that only 2 of the players tend to take a while with this process in other games. The rest want to play and get things done quickly.

 

[DMScott]

For my first game, I just used the templates (there are errataed versions on the official website: http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/). They cover a lot of standard comic book concepts, and most have obvious customization possibilities. I ran those characters for a couple of sessions until everybody was sufficiently familiar with the rules and system to make up their own characters.

If you want to make up characters, players who start with strong, basic concepts will be able to flesh them out pretty quickly - you might get them started in an hour or so, with the book-sharing. Players who want to work out the point system for optimizations, or who want to come up with a unique power, will tend to take considerably longer.

 

[Valiantheart]

With your groups limited experience it should take maybe one and a half or two hours. I suggest players start by deciding what powers they want and build from there.

There are plenty of example characters under Hero and Hero Vault here:
http://www.menefees.net/freedomcity/index.php

And you can always go to the main M&M boards here:
http://www.menefees.net/freedomcity/index.php

 

[swrushing]

JC, i would recommend one or two quick fight sessions with pregenned characters before you get into chargen. As with any point buy system, even a simple one like MnM, the participants need at least some experience to get a handle on what things work like.

I would recommend grabbing some of the revamped sample characters off the MnM site or (even better ) getting someone with a little experience to whip out maybe half a dozen heroes and three villains that would be good examples of chargen for standard 150 pt pcs.. I could, for instance, whip out those within an hour probably.

I ran two pre-gen runs with my guys and that handled most of their questions. There were still a few "that does what!?!" speedbumps afterwards but not as many as if i let them do chargen cold.

 

[jaults]

I strongly agree with DMScott and swrushing about using the pregens. They have a good range of options, but for the most part, they don't have any weird, hard-to-adjudicate powers. It is far simpler to use them for an intro game, and then phase in player-created characters later. This is what I have done with two different groups with much success.

I also created a cheat sheet with some of the M&M specific rules, along with page numbers referencing the rules in the book, that I handed out to my players. I attached the doc to give you an idea... If MS Word format isn't good, lemme know, and I'll save it as something else.

Jason

 

[takyris]

Depends on what kind of characters you've got. It seems like 75% of M&M is character creation, ruleswise. Once you've got a character, it's amazingly easy to play.

So if you've got people who just want to be that character and don't mind, get a concept and make the character for them beforehand.

If, on the other hand, you've got people who really love crunching numbers, then a session spent character-building is not wasted time, but fun time. In that case, I wouldn't make the characters, and I wouldn't insist on the archetype characters (although I would make them available to others). What I would do, though, is use some sorta packages.

For a lot of folks, the point buy stuff is confusing, and it's easy to build your character, be completely happy, and then realize you've forgotten to buy any points for your Base Defense Bonus, or that your character concept, flavorwise, was iron-willed enough that you actually need to plug in some Amazing Save powers.

So, for average characters, you might want to build some 70-80-power-point packages -- "here's a good melee warrior package; here's a good package for a guy who does lots of creative stuff with energy, including hurting people; here's a good package for a guy who relies on not getting hit"... The M&M board has a great thread about this stuff, using 75-point packages (which then leave the guy with 75 points to add additional powers, do their stats, and so forth).

It's also good to come up with some general guidelines. If you say, "Anyone who wants to be good in combat better have a +10 to either Strike, Weapon, Natural Weapon, or Super-Strength. Anyone who has an Energy Blast of less than +10 is wasting their time. Anyone with Protection or Armor better make it +10," that creates a much different flavor for your game than if you said, "Don't bother maxing out your Strike or Energy Blast stuff unless you're committed to being utterly focused in that direction, so much so that you're willing to lose out on skills and feats that would make your character useful in other situations." So be clear with them about what your world is like.

 

[John Crichton]

The Pre-Saga Begins...

Everyone, thanks for the advice so far.

To get myself better aquainted with the system I'm going to generate a few characters for myself (probably never to be used in game). I just found out that one of the guys who takes a long time to gen characters will not be coming on Saturday (good because he is slow and methodical, bad because he's a strong roleplayer). This will cut down on people needing to use books.

Most of the players have a ton of experience building characters with various systems and have played many superheroes games (Marvel & DC) so they will most likely have concepts all ready to go. I'll try and use some of the tips above to prep things.
The guys usually like to jump right into things (as do I) so they may not dig me running a few practice fights, even though it sounds like a good idea. I'll ask the guy who owns the book I am borrowing (my copy arrives tomorrow with Crooks!, woot!) how character gen went for them when they tried it. He said they made characters but never played. They were a little confused with how Super Strength worked but otherwise are excited about playing.

I'm thinking of starting them with the typical PL of 10 recommended in the book. Sounds about right for a 4 person superteam (could be 5 the next time we play).

 

[DMScott]

The guys usually like to jump right into things (as do I) so they may not dig me running a few practice fights, even though it sounds like a good idea.

Your practice sessions don't necessarily have to be unrelated fights. What I did with mine was use them to introduce a major villain, who at the end of the second session trashed the team badly. Said baddie, her henchmen, and the remnants of the first hero team (now mind-controlled slaves) all featured prominently when the new characters showed up. I stole the idea from Aaron Allston's Strike Force supplement (for Champions), it works pretty well.

 

[takyris]

The other thing I'd be clear on with folks is how much stuff can be stacked. If you wanted to do Superman, you could do it like this:

Superman:
Super-Strength: 6pp/rank

Flight: 2 pp/rank

Energy Blast (Heat vision): 2 pp/rank

Adding up to 10 pp/rank, if you max'd out all three. Or you could do:

Superman:

Power: Kryptonian Power Set

Super-Strength, Flight, Energy Blast: 6 + 1 + 1 = 8 pp/rank

The guy who says, "Well, those are all lumped together under the Kryptonian Power" saves 20 points on a PL10 character. In theory, the fact that he's saving all these points is balanced by the fact that he's got all his eggs in one basket -- a villain who gets one lucky "Neutralize" in takes away ALL his powers in one fell swoop instead of getting heat vision but not flight or super-strength. In practice, there aren't enough draining villains for this to be a legitimate check on power. My advice, frankly, is to encourage people to lump stuff together if they can think of a reason to do so. The designers already did this for you with Sorcery (buncha powers) and Cosmic Power (buncha powers), and it's reasonable to assume that most folks get their power from one main source, except for stuff like training to develop better willpower (Amazing Save:Will) or stocking up on Earth weapon (devices).

(Note: I know that that's a lame version of Superman -- it's just an example. I think I even forgot his invulnerability...)

One character I built had Strike as a Power Stunt of Energy Blast from his Cosmic Power+6 -- and that got him to Strike +6. I then gave him Strike+6 as a power built from training. The idea was that he had cosmic power, and used it to hit really hard and fire energy blasts, but even if he dropped his force field to fight somebody "man to man", he still had enough martial training to be a deadly combatant. This sort of combination was officially okay'd by the designer as a cool concept that worked well with the guy's background.

(And yes, since he was PL10, the +6 Cosmic Strike added to the +6 Training Strike for +12, but I only got +10. It was a bit of wasted power, but I liked the overlap of power.)

 

[Von Ether]

Another thing to keep in mind with M&M. It's real easy to make causual characters, which means someone who actually spends time number crunching can create a critter that is in a totally different league for the same number of points.

So you might have to keep that in mind and help some players while keeping others in check. I know that doesn't sound earthshattering, but effect is more pronounced in MnM.

And don't write off the errataed Archtypes, most of them have some flexible options. You can literally have like 4 completely different characters just off the Elementalist (a Blaster type, a Weather Witch, etc). They are also statted out so a player can continue to play them in a regular game. You could pretty much just tell the guys to pick an archtype for the campaign and you'd be set.

I don't know if you've ever ran a super hero game at all, but if you are new to this genre of gaming, there are some things to watch for ...

A flaw that isn't a flaw isn't a discount:
A gun that can't shoot animal or plants, Armor that has a weakness to a chemical that would never show up in a game, Crippled men who fly, are all examples of min/maxing that's not even in the spirit of the comic book genre.

Pigs at the Buffet:
Some players see all the cools stuff they could get for their character and they end up buying a lot of little things, forgetting their original concept.

Funky Powers Ask for Funky Attacks/Defences:
It's the Comic Book World, embrace it. Force Feilds that stop Insubstantial characters and AntiTelepathy rings are par for the course for the Rich, the Famous, and the Powerful as well as the prepared supervillian.

A Little Dab Will Do Ya:
Some powers in MnM, like Incorprealand Invisiblity, are front loaded and give the player a lot for just his first level or so. Some players will suddenly have "Exploding" characters because they become Invisible and Insubstial for only a few points.

Read Between The Lines:
Going on about the Exploding fellow, according to the descripton of the power you simply become Invisible and Incorpreal. One player thought that meant he was simply given those powers and he could go on his way. However, every power has to have Power Source and Special Effect, two details that can become mixed blessings. A mutant who explodes into a fine mist is going to have problems when someone either uses a vacum cleaner or a mutant killer virus. Make players give detail descriptions of their powers so you can do more than just use vanilla-flavored Neutralize all day.