Mutants & Masterminds Character Gen Time?

[Laslo Tremaine]

Here's a couple things I would recommend for some first time M&M character builders...

• Valdier's character creation tutorial.
• Simpson's fantastic Excel character sheet.
The rules section of Green Ronin's M&M webboard has some terrific advice for figuring out character generation.

And my one piece of advice would be to know your players. Do you have some super munchkin power-gamers? Then make sure you keep and eye on their characters and be willing to ask them to tone it down. Got couple super roll-players who are not interested in the fiddly bits of character design? Then be ready to step in a give them a hand to bring their characters up to par with the rest of the group.

More so than most games, M&M requires mature players. In my group a new player made a combat beast who was going around eviscerating things with a damage DC about five or six higher than anyone else in the group. I just asked him to drop his damage DC by three or so, and everyone was happy. He knew I was doing it to keep things a bit more balanced so had no problem with it.

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

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).

This wold be an awesome Superlink product.

 

[Dragonblade]

I'm curious as to why you don't require the rest of the group to buy the core book?

My DM/GM philosophy has always been if you are not dedicated enough to the game to bring your own rulebook, then you don't belong at the game table.

That may sound harsh but its solves a lot of problems. For one thing, players take the game more seriously once they have invested money in it. It also speeds up play since everyone isn't passing the one rulebook around.

Maybe I'll start up a thread about this on the main page. Could be an interesting topic...

 

[takyris]

Dragonblade: Because we like M&M and are trying to convince our players to give it a shot. Most of my players are already saying, "Ehh, it sounds like a lot of new rules to learn..." If I tell them to buy what is, admittedly, a fairly thin book for a lot of money, they're gonna be quite likely to just say, "Forget it, it's not worth the trouble, let's just play D&D instead."

And I personally think that if I can get them into a good game of M&M, they'll love it.

 

[John Crichton]

Dragonblade: Because we like M&M and are trying to convince our players to give it a shot. Most of my players are already saying, "Ehh, it sounds like a lot of new rules to learn..." If I tell them to buy what is, admittedly, a fairly thin book for a lot of money, they're gonna be quite likely to just say, "Forget it, it's not worth the trouble, let's just play D&D instead."

And I personally think that if I can get them into a good game of M&M, they'll love it.

Bingo. Heck, I didn't even own the book until this week (make that yesterday). If the guys like it they will go out and buy the books.

I'd love for everyone to go out and get the core book but what if they don't like the game?

 

[Threedub]

I just bought two extra copies of the rulebook and had the players share it as they made up their characters a few weeks in advance. A lot easier than using one book at a table for 6 hours, we used that time to play D&D.

 

[Dragonblade]

Good point. If you are just trying to get them interested in playing then thats cool.

But if the campaign is going on strong and the players are constantly begging you to prepare for another game, then thats when I start asking them to make an investment in the game instead of making me do all the work and supply the rulebooks too.

 

[Von Ether]

I just bought two extra copies of the rulebook and had the players share it as they made up their characters a few weeks in advance. A lot easier than using one book at a table for 6 hours, we used that time to play D&D.

This hits on a couple of things I've experienced lately.

1.) We just had a guy quit our D&D group and while he's a nice PERSON, he's been an awful player. He never bought a PHB, but he's been the one asking the most questions and he's seen every ruling he thought was "wrong" as a personal attack.

2.) In another game, we have a GM who has the only Champions core rule book. It's taken something like 4 sessions to create characters. That was frustrating for me becuase my PC (a millionare Brick with a permanent Damgage Field) was the simplist in design and finished before the first session was even half way through. Don't get me wrong, I like hanging out with people in general, but I could have also been doing other things too.

 

[John Crichton]

Y'all touch on some good points with having enough rulebooks to go around. We did our character gen yesterday. There were 5 people total, 4 players and 2 core rulebooks. Character gen took FOREVER. All night. I'll say between all the BSing about 6-8 hours. Now, mind you, I still had a ton of fun because many of the members of this group are still new to me and we have stories and jokes to share. But only having 2 rulebooks significantly hindered our ability to make characters quickly.

I thought that I might be able to get by with referencing the books here and there but that didn't work at all (as I initially thought). I needed one to answer questions just as much as others needed one to research powers, feats and so on. It didn't help that one guy kept changing his concept over and over and another guy kept tweaking the character over and over again when learning about new powers - not that this surprises me. A supers game with a new system always is very "that is SO cool, my character HAS to have that power" heavy. M&M has way too much number crunching to at least not have everyone (well at least, say, 80% of the people) have access at the table to a rulebook.

Now, I'm sure as I get better acquainted with the rules, I won't need it as much during character gen but I'm going to want access anyway for rules questions that I just can't remember. Add the fact that there is a healthy amount of errata to cross check for some major powers (which I have no problem with, it just slows things up a bit) and that is a recipe for some drawn-out character gen.

Overall, I liked it but I did want to get a chance to play. The next time we make characters I know at least another one of the players will have a rulebook and there is a good chance I'll have an extra on hand, too. It's worth it for me and I can afford it. It was a good experience either way. I look forward to running an adventure next time we play (in 2 weeks).

 

[Neo]

I guess the time it takes depends on how you handle char gen as a whole.

Myself I use the following method.

1. all players sit down and discuss what kind of characters they want to play (no rulebooks are present). This gives them each thier theme to guild from and also avoids the "oh thats cool I must have that too" that pops up waaay to often if you give them the book first. concept provides a basic idea of powers, suitable skills and feats and a weakness.

2. quick sheets handed out, lists all powers, PP costs and power stunts, extras, flaws as standard. Also has list of all extras and flaws with a brief dscriptor of what they do. sheet also has list of feats and skills (including main attrib). Finally sheets also have the Building Costs table i.e Stats base 10, cost over this 1 per 1 etc..

3. Blank character Sheets are handed out.

4. Players then build thier character using those sheets.. if they want a better idea of what a power or something specific does, they ask me (the GM) and I tell them.

And thats it... much less time consuming, far more organised and requires only One Rulebook.