Valiant Adventures Superhero TTRPG Coming From Green Ronin

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Green Ronin has announced that it's Mutants & Masterminds-powered superhero RPG, Valiant Adventures, will be hitting Kickstarter on January 16th.

The game was originally announced in April 2023, and will be a standalone RPG based on the Valiant comic book universe, which features characters such as X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and Archer & Armstrong. The initial launch will include three books--Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook, Gamemaster’s Kit, and the Worlds of Valiant sourcebook.

 

[Mistwell]

I was surprised, and to be honest, a bit disappointed to hear about this, to be honest. I don't know much about Valiant, but I have no interest in the sort of grimmer-and-gritter supers type genre that was being talked up by GR in the various announcements, and it does seem very niche and lacking in broader appeal beyond a few hardcore comic fans.

When I used to be into Valiant comics from 1992-1995, I don't recall them being "grim and gritty." They had a dinosaur hunter, a robot fighter, an iron-man analog, some witty banter between Archer and Armstrong, etc.. At least three of the comics were revivals of some pretty campy Gold Key comics. But my memories are pretty vague of the whole thing. I still have them all, maybe I should give them a new read.

 

[humble minion]

Flicking through the quickstart on this, as I'm getting to the last half day or so of the kickstarter and I'll have to decide whether or not to back.

It's 3e M&M, but definitely gets a bit of a 5e blood transfusion. Advantage/disadvantage (ahem, I mean bonus/penalty dice) are in, Reactions are in. Presence attacks, straight from old school Champions, are in, and a large number of other combat options generally locked behind feats. There's a bit of an expansion on lethal/non-lethal damage systems. I wish they'd shown us more of the power templates - stuff like the ambiguity of Affliction, the underpoweredness of Shrinking, and the inflexibility of Weaken was a serious, serious drag on building 3e PCs, and the lack of things like 2es Independent power modifier made a bunch of concepts just not workable.

Still on the fence about the rulebook. I'll buy the worldbook, but if they'd committed hard to actually doing a re-write of some of the problematic powers the rulebook would be an auto-buy for me.