Superline Gamemaster's Series: Campaign Planner

[Messageboard Golem]

This 33-page PDF, designed by Philip Reed for use with M&M Superlink, is a collection of 30 forms GMs can use to plan and track their superhero campaigns. Including forms on basic campaign information, adventure planning, allowed archetypes, powers, and sourcebooks, and a campaign newspaper, this product is useful for any M&M campaign. Space to record villain information is included, but minimal -- GMs are encouraged to detail important supervillains using Green Ronin Publishing's Character Record Folio.

Through special permission, this product includes a form for tracking the campaign's Crisis Level -- an optional rule available in Green Ronin Publishing's Crooks! supplement. Please note that the crisis level rules are not open game content

 

[Teflon Billy]

OK, it would seem that I am a total retard.

Phil Reed, head dude at Ronin Arts—purveyors of about a half-million high-quality .pdf’s (if it’s a.pdf and you like it, there’s about an 89% chance that Reed had something to do with it)—sent me some Mutants and Masterminds accessories for review a long time ago, and I think it was summarily lost in the shuffle of my ENnies reading and my Gen Con preparation. This is utterly inexcusable on my part and I hope to set it right as of right now.

First on the agenda is the very easily reviewed Campaign Planner from the Superline Gamemaster’s series for Mutants and Masterminds. At its core, this is a toolkit for assembling your own superhero setting. It is literally a “Fill-in-the Blanks” series of pages that could be printed off, tossed into a ring-binder and updated as necessary.

If that sounds like I am unimpressed with it, then I’ve given the wrong impression. Its relative simplicity is what lends it its incredible utility: there is no learning curve here. If you are thinking of running a Mutants and Masterminds campaign, then this is a great item with which to get your thoughts together. If you are already running one, it is a fantastic way to stay organized, and though it is very peripherally tagged to Mutants and Masterminds (e.g. a reference to Crooks Crisis Level optional rules), given it’s low price-point I could easily see recommending it for nearly any Superhero RPG that you intend to actually run.

So what is the thing? Well, it’s a bunch of forms that you fill out with information appropriate to your setting and characters.

Things as general as a Campaign Overview or Roster of Heroes are here as are much more specific GM-type stuff as Unresolved Issues and Leads and Supporting cast Game information.

There are 31 different forms and worksheets here that I won’t list (as the “Damn! That is useful” reaction when you see them would be somewhat dimmed if I just churn them all out there…as well as bleeding off some of the salability of the product), but suffice to say that they are all useful on first glance, and are laid out in a pretty genre-appropriate fashion.

Bruce Baugh (Gamma World, Ex Machina, tons of WoD stuff) has his name in the credits here, but I can’t imagine what he contributed to it as he is primarily a writer if memory serves. I loved his work in Ex Machina, but if the multiple “authors” of this piece actually collaborated on it in any meaningful way, they did so seamlessly enough that their separate works aren’t noticeable.

Anyway, at $4.99 I can’t imagine not recommending this product to all Superhero RPG Game Masters. It just simplifies life too much to not do so.

 

[Sketchpad]

Is there a form version of this? Or is it a print & write product?

 

[Teflon Billy]

I'm not sure. I don't have acrobat myself, so even if it was a form version, I wouldn't know.

I did "Print and Write".

 

[jerefoley]

I just bought it - the PDF's print-only. If you have full Acrobat (not just Reader), you can create your own text fields... but they're not inherent in the document.

It's neat if you've not yet developed a system of organization. I installed a bulletin board on my website for my players, and that's working well for us. One of my players volunteered to be "Party Chronicler" and posts the adventures as Session Notes. They also keep a Villain Database (individual posts for each villain), as well as a list of key NPCs.

Though our campaign's established, I can see myself using some of the ideas in this PDF to add further flavor! Easily worth the $5.27 for a splash to the creative juices!