Mutants & Masterminds: Freedom City - 2nd Edition

[Tetsubo]

I'm looking for opinions on this product. I'm currently reading M&M 2nd Edition and I'm really digging it. I'm thinking of mamybe doing a supers game. Would it make sense to pick up this book rather than scratch build my own city? I was thinking of a low power game to start with and ramp up the power level as the game continues. Start at 5th level and increase things one level every two adventures or so. The hook is that supers are new in the world. As more and more appear, the available power increases.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I don't have the 2nd edition, but I have the 1st edition Freedom City. IIRC, most of the hero and villain NPCs are in the 10-15 power level range, with a few higher and a few lower. It's set up with established hero groups in the city, so you'd have to do some tweaking if supers are brand new and still learning their powers.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Freedom City is a pretty solid sourcebook, in that it provides plenty of details about the city, and it wouldn't be too difficult to remove the resident hero team(s) and replace them with your PCs, making only a few minor change here and there to account for the lack of the Freedom League as shown in the book. It's got more of a Silver/Modern Age skew to it, but a low-powered game is possible. If supers are just starting to appear, then some setting changes may be required, such as how things change if there's no Centurion, and a few other details. Of course, for your game, maybe Centurion was more of a Doc Savage type than a Superman homage.

And even if you never plan on using the pre-gen'd villains, or use the heroes as villains, the plethora of character types can provide a guideline, as they all draw on various comic book archetypes in some fashion or another.

 

[Ben Robbins]

Like PJ said, Freedom City is built around the established heroes and villains, and there are lots of them. More so there is a long history of superheroes, history that is woven into place names, legacy characters, etc.

If you really want a "first supers ever" game, you might have better luck starting with a much more mundane/normal setting. Even the name Freedom City evokes a comic book/superhero genre (as I'm sure it's meant to). Of course you could get the book and then just mine it for characters to adapt to your emerging supers setting, but you'd be throwing out the deep history and detailed backgrounds/relationships (which are some of the strong points).

 

[Krolik]

For my mind, even if you did not choose to use Freedom City for the setting the fact that the book has some 25 heroes and 80 villain write-ups in it makes it quite valuable to anyone wanting to start a game. You can easily convert the heroes to villains and have over 100 baddies to throw at your players on short notice. As far as PL issues it is a very simple thing to decrease a villain's PL to match your level needs since a villain's PL is entirely based on only four factors: Attack, Damage, Defense, and Toughness. Decrease those four things and the rest of the character can stay the same.

 

[Ben Robbins]

As far as PL issues it is a very simple thing to decrease a villain's PL to match your level needs since a villain's PL is entirely based on only four factors: Attack, Damage, Defense, and Toughness. Decrease those four things and the rest of the character can stay the same.

Not to get off topic, but even ignoring other stats that are PL limited (saves, ability scores, skills), you would probably want to adjust powers that weren't necessarily limited to PL just to match conceptual power level. If you started off with a PL 15 character who could Obscure a whole city, you would probably want to scale that down when you make the character PL 5. Or not. It's a matter of personal preference and internal game balance at that point.

(I'm mostly just bringing this up since the original poster is new to M&M and I don't want to give them the wrong impression of the rules)

 

[bolen]

What changed from 1st to second? only the stats?

 

[Bretbo]

What changed from 1st to second? only the stats?

Changes:

• The timeline is advanced (including Time of Crisis as a part of history now).
• The characters from Foes of Freedom are included, though one or two where not (can't off hand remember which ones).
• A chapter is lncluded with suggestions for designing characters with backgrounds in FC.
• Each Freedom Leaguer's Rogues' List is no longer provided.
• The city maps are much, much more detailed now.

I'm sure there is more, I'll post it when I remember.

 

[Michael Dean]

I really recommend FC 2d ed. It's detailed enough so that you can use it for pretty much any d20 Modern setting as well as supers. I have used it a lot for pulp era campaigns, and Cthulhu too. As a super setting, though, it really shines.

 

[Sketchpad]

I'm looking for opinions on this product. I'm currently reading M&M 2nd Edition and I'm really digging it. I'm thinking of mamybe doing a supers game. Would it make sense to pick up this book rather than scratch build my own city? I was thinking of a low power game to start with and ramp up the power level as the game continues. Start at 5th level and increase things one level every two adventures or so. The hook is that supers are new in the world. As more and more appear, the available power increases.

By far, one of the best settings that emulates the superhero genre. If you like mainstream comics, FC 2e is for you!