My first campaign need help!

[Duke Fish]

I just bought the M&M book, in a week or something am going to have a campiagn with my group. No one in the group have played M&M before, so i need some advices how to get em to understand the game fast. I am thinking of having a campaing where the players use the alrady made persons who is in the book. Later am going to use the adventure who is back in the book. What adventure is smart to use the first time??? so the can learn the game??

If you are an experienced player plz tell me how your first campiagn where(if it where good)

Thx

 

[takyris]

Read a few notches down in this forum -- someone had a bad experience, and there was/is some good discussion about how it happened and why it happened and how to avoid it next time.

A few general suggestions (hopefully others will add/edit/refute):

- Figure out yourself whether you want to start people off in this system with carefully nuanced characters or simple characters painted with broad strokes. I went the broad-strokes route -- pretty much every power my PCs had was at +10, and I gave everyone an offensive power, a defensive power, and a movement power.

- Make the characters yourself. The archetypes are... best for nuanced games. They tend to get plastered by minmaxed characters, though -- and minmaxed is likely what you'll make if you make bad guys yourself.

- Keep things simple. Honestly, do you need to do much work to make people understand how M&M skills work? Not really. Most of my first session was about how powers work and how those new combat rules play -- and my players, who know D&D and d20 Modern inside and out, used the skills they knew by heart and went to town with the powers and combat rules.

- Differentiate D&D strategy and M&M strategy. Taking a hit is not the end of the world. Getting stunned is not the end of the world. Since you most likely only get one attack, the threat of taking a full-round attack from a monster is much lighter. Hero Points are a good way to avoid a bad thing and a GREAT way to make a good thing possible.

- Use the environment. Trading damage feels a lot like D&D, so have bad guys knock buildings and cars onto people -- even if that's just the flavor text for a Super-Strength or Energy Blast attack. My players loved my description of having the Super-Tough character get slammed back into a brick wall hard enough to leave a spiderweb of cracks and a foot-deep impression, only to have the player then have him hop back down, shake off the dust, and say, "That all you got?" (as he made a damage save after soaking most of the damage)

- Make sure to build bad guys that are an appropriate challenge for your heroes, not pushovers or TPK candidates. Don't send a mentalist against an all-physical group. It'll be ugly, and what's worse -- it won't be fun. Bricks have fun fighting bricks. Blasters have fun fighting blasters. Utility players (speedsters, shapeshifters, etc) do well against each other or against non-minmaxed versions of the above. That's fun.

 

[Duke Fish]

Thx for the help... i have also played D&D (5years now or something) that is fun so i hope M&M also is fun.. Shouldnt i use the premade characters??? isnt that easy just to show em how to play and after a couple of weeks they make their own charachters?

anyway am greatfull for you advice

 

[takyris]

Well, it depends on the group. There's a popular opinion that says that the premade characters aren't actually made that well. They're not BAD, per se, but they get their hineys handed to them if someone else tries to make something of about the same flavor. I can make a better energy person than their energy person, and in fact, if I just make somebody off the top of my head, the one I end up making will likely BE better.

They're good against other pre-made characters, but I wouldn't use them against characters you make up on the spot, because those guys are probably gonna be more powerful. That's just how it's worked out for me, though.

 

[DMScott]

The archetype characters (Cyclone, Inferna, Minotaur, etc.) aren't awful, they're just a few steps short of optimized. They tend to have 10 ranks in their attack and defense powers, they're short a few easy tricks beyond that. They're not a horrible choice for a first adventure, so long as you use versions of the archetypes against them. But by the end of the first session, your players will probably have spotted a few easy ways to improve them.

The M&M characters that are kinda poorly put together are the Freedom League, from the sample adventure in the book. They are mostly on the weak side for their PL. So if you plan to use that as your first adventure, then using the archetypes is no problem.

However, what I recommend for a first adventure is to find out what sort of comics your players like, and basically steal your first adventure idea from their favourite books. If your players are attracted to an X-Men style team of outcasts, set up something like that and use one of the X-team debuts as the basis for your first adventure. So long as you change it enough that they don't immediately recognize it, you should end up with a fun first session.

For example, my first session I had a couple of players who liked Avengers-style heroics. So I took my plot right from the Avengers origin - the Avengers originally banded together to stop the rampaging Hulk (who was being manipulated by Loki). I created a big brick-type guy named Rampage and had him ripping up the property for the good guys to stop him. It worked well, though since I didn't quite get the balance right we ended up having the multiple fights with Rampage take up our whole session, and they didn't get a chance to explore who was behind the whole thing. That's OK, I just cut that part out on the fly - so long as everybody has a good time, you're doing it right.

 

[Valiantheart]

Some advice:

Use the 3:1 skill to pp ratio otherwise making skill based characters (i.e. batman types) is really hard.

Beware of using really high protection powers for your villains.

Power Attack and All Out Attack are great feats for virtually any blaster. They mitigate melees natural advantage in the damage department.

Be very wary of the Ramming rules. They are extremely exploitable for any character who has any type of protection based power. Consider making them less accurate or cause the rammer to lose his dodge bonus (like charge but more).

Some powers are exploitable with only one rank like incorporeal and invisibility. Consider requiring a minimum number of ranks before characters can use those powers.

Constitution Drains are extremely lethal and should be used with caution.

Many characters coming from D&D still have a kill the villain and collect the loot mentality. Its important to remind them they are the "hero"s but still subject to public opinion and basic laws. They shouldnt be killing villains willy nilly on the streets in full view of the public/press/police. Villains are supposed to survive as odd as that may sound.

 

[Duke Fish]

Thx

you got good advices, many in my group like X-man, spiderman and mostley everything from marvel so that wont be so hard to find out how to make it..

Thx

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

My advice: either make teh characters for the group, yourself or at the very least, make about 6 characters ahead of time then help your players make their characters.

When the game first came out, it helped me to become intimately familiar with the rules by first making all the characaters myself so that I had a solid understanding of how the system worked and what the beenfits and drawbacks were of each character.

Admitedly, making the characters can be somewhat daunting at first. It was a little tricky and I got so much of the numbers confused in my head (as you build the characters totally from points).