Mutants & Masterminds - Converting Between Editions

 

A lot of the stretch goals with the new M&M Kickstarter are 4th edition conversions of 3rd edition adventures. I get why they are doing this - it's easy to do and they're already written so, sure, and you're getting them for free but they're only 6$ PDFs anyway so ... I don't know. 

Back to that "easy" part - how easy is it to convert something between editions of this game? Well ... most of the time it's pretty straightforward. One key item: the difficulty chart is the same for every edition of the game!

This one is taken from the 4th edition playtest document but it is the same for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th edition:

• 1st edition: Page 147
• 2nd edition: Page 7
• 3rd edition: Page 13 (Deluxe Hero's Handbook)
• 4th edition: Page 15 (Playtest Origin Edition)

Outside of combat and individual character powers that chart up there has the numbers you need and the amazing thing is that regardless of edition you don't have to update them! 

So you might go through the text, find anywhere that "DC" is mentioned, and check what it's referring to - typically a skill, possibly an ability. These do change from edition to edition but most of the time it's pretty obvious what you need to change to. A DC25 "Computers" check in a 2E adventure becomes a DC 25 "Technology" check in 3E or 4E. In 1E it would likely have been a Computers or Repair. In some editions the right "Expertise" skill is a good substitute, at least when I'm running. 

The abilities do change with every edition but they are always centered around the six D&D type abilities and they are on the standard d20 scale that we've been using for the last 25+ years, sometimes with a score, sometimes with just the modifier, but an 18 in 1st edition is still a +4 in 4th. 

Attacks and Damage work pretty consistently across editions so there's not usually much to worry about there.  

The area with the most effort required should be translating characters. Assuming we are talking about the NPCs from an adventure or some setting guide then it's not really that bad. The biggest thing here is the Powers - those change every edition, sometimes dramatically, from how they are built to how they work in-game. You might get a character with a complicated build that relies on mechanical tricks that don't translate to a different edition. If you want to stay consistent with what the character used to do then you may have to rebuild it from the ground up, possibly using a completely different power to achieve a similar effect. If you run into this a lot it could eat up some time but there are alternatives:

• Assuming it's an NPC villain of some kind, well, despite the edition change this guy's powers work like they did in the other version - here's his hit bonus with it, here's the target # to resist it, have at it! It's not the most elegant solution but sometimes it's the best solution and since the mechanics of the game system are so similar across editions it can still work. 
• Look at the general effect of what the character does in that edition - don't worry about all the tricky details and add-ons, just look at the main impact it has on the game. Find a power in your edition of choice that does something similar - it may not be as complicated, it may not be as flashy as the old version, but if it let's Think Tank mind control innocent bystanders then you're good even if it doesn't specifically account for some of those details. As you work through it in the new version you might find some new tricks that are still cool and fun for the GM to impose.
• Archetypes: I see Chimpanzoom has a writeup in 1st edition Time of Crisis. I see he has one in 2nd edition ToC. To run it in 3rd I could go back through one or both of those and try to re-create him as closely as possible ... or I could just grab the Speedster Archetype, maybe tweak it a little in some way to make him a little different, and run that instead. Remember that the mechanics give you the numbers but the way the character acts, speaks, and reacts are largely outside of those. You were going to have to decide on those anyway regardless of edition. Whether he has a 14 or a 15 Dodge isn't nearly as important as the personality and the look. 

These guys know ...

When translating also keep in mind that the points don't matter. It's good to have a Power Level in mind for your character - maybe it's the same as the other version, maybe it's not depending on what you want to do - but the points are more for PC's than NPCs. Archetypes are an incredibly useful tool for anything like this. 

So yes, it's not difficult to modify things to work in different editions with this game. That's part of why I'm a little disappointed with this part of the Kickstarter. The first four were all this kind of thing and there are two more down the road if it keeps going. The latest achieved goal is the Earth Prime Gazetteer which is at least not a simple update of an existing thing ... wait ...

Ah ... right. Now Steve Kenson has said they are revising the setting with this edition - the Freedom City setting specifically. That's probably smart after 20+ years of building it out and advancing the timeline so I don't have a problem with that plan and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. Buuuut ... this is still an intro type document for the world, not a new version of the complete thing. So it's better than the adventures at least, to me, because it is going to cover some new ground. 

The next goal is a new character record folio. It's a big character sheet. Once a new builder is out these won't see much use and let's be honest here, "Character Sheet" as a crowdfunding stretch goal is ... well it might be a new low as far as effort required. These are things that are typically a free download on the company website or at DTRPG. No one should be particularly excited about this.

The final other type of stretch goal that we know about right now are Alternate Archetypes. Now I was excited about this when I saw the name as I was a huge fan of the Archetype Archives and Instant Superheroes in 2nd Edition that added new archetypes and more options to the existing ones. They were great for GMs and for players too. Well, it's not that. It's the archetypes in the game at PL8 and the other one is at PL12. I am assuming there will not be radical re-conceptualizing of each concept and that this will mainly be a math exercise. Well ... OK. I mean I can use them - the PL12 versions will make for handy drop-in villains but in Hero Lab for 3rd edition that's two clicks on "Scale Up" or "Scale Down" for the basics and then some tweaking on what else I want to enhance or downgrade. It's not a whole lot of effort if that's all that it is. 

So yeah, I love Mutants & Masterminds - I'm running it right now! I think the people working on it are good at what they do and I hope the KS hits a million dollars. I know there are constraints on what they can do right now with the Diamond situation. I'm just a little disappointed at the low effort on the stretch goals for this one. That said I am looking forward to the new edition even if I'm not going to run it until next year at least, after we get through a nice long run with 3rd which will no doubt end with another Crisis of some kind and turn things upside down for a new era and edition.

Mutants & Masterminds - New Edition Ups and Downs

 The Kickstarter appears to be going very well (over 1,000 backers, over 100K $ as I write this) which is a good thing for the game and its future and I am glad for that. 

It's a little weird that there are a fair number of questions that are asking if one can do various things in the game or will be included in the game that are already in 3E M&M so yes, I think it's safe to assume powers and options included in the current edition will be included in the new one. I'm guessing a lot of the people asking don't play the current game but I don't know. Since they announced the new edition a few months ago there have been all kinds of helpful suggestions made including things like "you should add in a hit point system" which ... yeah, I don't know. How has no one thought of that in the prior 20+ years of the system? "No hit points" is a feature of the game, not a miss that needs to be corrected.

That does lead into another point I see made: "It's easy for D&D players to learn because it uses a d20 for everything like combat and skill checks". That is, in my experience, really not the case. Sure, the Abilities are mostly similar, skill checks and hit rolls are familiar, but for people coming over from D&D 5E there are 3 massive hills to climb:

• Power Level in M&M is not the same as Levels in D&D. They're just not, experience points do not work the same way and "levelling" is just not a thing here, or in most superhero games. This is a pretty big shift. I wouldn't change it, it's just a thing new players have to work through.
• Powers and the construction thereof just blow people's minds. It's not intuitive if you're coming over from D&D. Explaining effects-based power design is a challenge and while many people can pick it up quickly once you've walked them through it using known examples of superheroes there are a lot of people that have a really hard time making that jump. A lot of combat ability comes from either the "Damage" effect or the "Affliction" effect and while they are extremely flexible getting this through to a new player is a lot tougher than sword/bow/axe/magic missile. 
• Finally there is the damage system: it's a huge change from any version of D&D and a lot of D&D-only players hate it as soon as they see it. Some will come around if you can get them to persevere, but in my experience it is the single biggest deal-breaker for new recruits. I would never want them to change it, but it is the biggest obstacle I see. Sometimes that's just the way it is. It's a different game, parts of it are going to work differently, and that's a good thing, not a negative. Not everything needs to use the same mechanics. 
  (It's also very similar to Savage Worlds' damage system and between the two I've played enough that I like them better than hit points for a lot of games but it's an issue for new players there too.)

Other regular requests include a new character creator and a VTT. I agree on the character creator - it makes things a lot easier for the GM to track, build, and update. The VTT ... well, sure, but while maps are still useful in a superhero game tactical grid maps are ... less so. I am using the combat manager option from Hero Lab quite a bit in our game but that's mainly because I can see all the opposition's powers and drop conditions on everyone with a click here and a click there. If a VTT module includes something like that then I'm more interested. If someone thinks they're going to get special effects like visuals and sound effects for everything you can think up for a superhero game I just don't see that happening quickly and a partial effort is just going to be frustrating. 

How about we let them get the core book out the door before we start piling on the requests? I mean I am not really looking forward to having all of those wonderful 3E books (and Hero Lab files) pushed into the "old category" anytime soon so no need to rush this. Take your time, make it good, minimize the errata, get it out, and I'm sure the support and the tools will come.

40k Friday: Tyranids vs. Ultramarines

 

With Boom Gun Brandon back in town last weekend we managed to get in a game of of 40K - first one of 2026! This was 2000 points of my still-being-assembled Tyranids against 2000 points of his still-being-painted Ultramarines with some assists from my Crimson Fists where he doesn't have certain units.

Now we only got in a few turns but it was a lot of fun. The forces:

The Defenders of Ultramar:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Ultramarines

+ DETACHMENT: Blade of Ultramar (Mastered Doctrines)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 2000pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: Roboute Guilliman

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 14

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (3x2) + (1x4) - Assassination: 5 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char3: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char4: 1x Captain in Gravis Armour (80 pts): Master-crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle, Master-crafted Power Weapon

Char5: 1x Captain in Terminator Armour (95 pts): Storm Bolter, Relic Weapon

Char1: 1x Lieutenant Titus (70 pts): Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

Char2: 1x Roboute Guilliman (340 pts): Warlord, Hand of Dominion, The Emperor's Sword

10x Assault Intercessor Squad (150 pts)

• 1x Assault Intercessor Sergeant: Heavy Bolt Pistol, Astartes Chainsword

• 9x Assault Intercessors: 9 with Astartes Chainsword, Heavy Bolt Pistol

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Flamestorm Gauntlets

3x Aggressor Squad (95 pts)

• 1x Aggressor Sergeant: Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

• 2x Aggressors: 2 with Twin Power Fist, Auto Boltstorm Gauntlets, Fragstorm grenade launcher

1x Ballistus Dreadnought (150 pts): Armoured Feet, Ballistus Lascannon, Ballistus Missile Launcher, Twin Storm Bolter

3x Bladeguard Veteran Squad (80 pts)

• 1x Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant: Master-crafted Power Weapon, Heavy Bolt Pistol

• 2x Bladeguard Veterans: 2 with Heavy Bolt Pistol, Master-crafted Power Weapon

1x Redemptor Dreadnought (195 pts): Redemptor Fist, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Twin Fragstorm Grenade Launcher

1x Repulsor Executioner (220 pts): Armoured Hull, Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon, Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Repulsor Executioner Defensive Array, Twin Heavy Bolter, Twin Icarus Ironhail Heavy Stubber, Heavy Laser Destroyer

5x Terminator Assault Squad (180 pts)

• 1x Assault Terminator Sergeant: Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

• 4x Assault Terminator: 4 with Storm Shield, Thunder Hammer

5x Terminator Squad (170 pts)

• 1x Terminator Sergeant: Storm Bolter, Power Fist

• 4x Terminator: 4 with Power Fist, Storm Bolter

The main theme here is "things the kid thinks are cool". I say kid but I probably shouldn't since he's an actual U.S. Marine now but he is my best friend's son and all of 18 years old so ... I will probably keep doing it. 

The Terrifying Tyranids:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - Tyranids

+ DETACHMENT: Invasion Fleet (Hyper Adaptions)

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1995pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char2: The Swarmlord

+ ENHANCEMENT: 

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 13

+ SECONDARY: - Bring It Down: (6x2) + (3x4) - Assassination: 4 Characters

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char3: 1x Broodlord (80 pts): Broodlord Claws and Talons

Char1: 1x Old One Eye (150 pts): Old One Eye’s claws and talons

Char2: 1x The Swarmlord (220 pts): Warlord, Bone Sabres, Synaptic Pulse

Char4: 1x Winged Hive Tyrant (170 pts): Tyrant talons, Monstrous bonesword and lash whip

2x Carnifexes (180 pts)

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex scything talons, Devourers with brainleech worms

  1 with Chitinous claws and teeth, Bio-plasma, Carnifex crushing claws, Heavy venom cannon

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

10x Genestealers (140 pts): 10 with Genestealers claws and talons

1x Haruspex (125 pts): Grasping tongue, Ravenous maw, Shovelling claws

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Screamer-killer (125 pts): Bio-plasmic scream, Screamer-killer talons

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

1x Tyrannofex (200 pts): Powerful limbs, Stinger salvoes, Rupture cannon

The main theme here is "stuff I had close enough to ready to use" which meant none of the new warriors I built, no gargoyles, no neurotyrant ... some of these are built but weren't stuck to the base yet as I wanted to be able to spray their belly/chest. As it turned out I liked the force quite a bit. Fun stuff + some redundancy is a good approach.

Got to get the Landing Pad on the table for the first time too!

We went with Dawn of War deployment and ended up with Purge the Foe for our primary objective. That's fine, we were both looking for a straight-up fight anyway. The marines got first turn so away we went!

Well, after scout moves that is ...

He pretty much just moved up as much as he could and then took shots with his Repulsor Executioner and both dreads and managed to blow up my Haruspex before it could do anything. not bad - that's a dangerous unit.

Part of the Primary on this one beyond "Kill" and "Kill More" is "Hold One" and "Hold More" from Turn 2 onward so there is some positioning to set up future objective control here.

He also managed to gun down most of the 'Stealer unit after running the Repulsor right up on it and disembarking some intercessors. 

Need to get the right colors on that Repulsor Executioner since it keeps getting used

So he had a pretty good turn here. One big unit destroyed, another one gutted, and units in good positions.

I feel like this is a significant view ...

On my turn I attempted to move that surviving genestealer - he did pass battleshock - and he was promptly gunned down by Overwatch from the Repulsor - "defensive array" for the win!

I ran one of the screamer-killers up on the Primarch ...

 and managed to land 6 wounds before Guilliman laid him out.

That was most of the action for Turn 1 though I did manage to wipe out a squad of intercessors over on my left with another squad of genestealers led by a broodlord.

They were absolutely brutal doing something like 30-ish hits and a bunch of wounds before the big one even got involved. Revenge!

Turn 2 still moved pretty quick - objectives were seized and he shot my Tyrannofex with the Executioner's big gun but failed to kill it ...

Yes it does bother me sometimes that I have multiple painted armies and somehow I keep posting up fights with unpainted forces.

The aggressors and a gravis captain charged into my carnifexes and managed to kill one ... then the survivor and Old One Eye just destroyed them - no survivors there!

The main event this turn was that the Primarch got close enough to charge the Swarmlord - general against general! He ran the fight above first and then I interrupted for 2CP to have the Swarmlord go first here ...

The wounded primarch had no chance with the 'nid's sneaky move - the scream-k's earlier sacrifice had set our side up for a win and that's exactly what happened - G-man dropped and did not get up! It was an emotional moment.

On my turn I blew up the Repulsor and started collecting objective VPs. Things continued similarly and victory ended up going to the Tyranids as after that we had both a firepower advantage and a melee advantage. 

Anyway it was a lot of fun to get my swarm on the table for a real fight and also to see his army hit the table again for a second go. 

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Kickstarter is Up and Running

 

Well it's here and you can see it here if you haven't already. They hit their goal in about 6 hours yesterday so that's good and I'm hoping this is one of those realistic goals for what it would take to actually get it done and not a lowball goal like we see sometimes in this arena. I'm wishing them all the success in the world with this - and yes I did jump in on it - as I'd  like to see Green Ronin get a win right now, particularly with what I would say is the best-supported superhero RPG of the last two decades. If you like superhero roleplaying I hope you will take a look.

I do have a few concerns here. 

Personally I've cut back my crowdfunding participation as publisher after publisher puts everything out as a funding campaign. Some of them are not good at it and that spills over, fair or not, into the whole system. I've only done one other recently and that was for the new version of Apocalypse World as I want to see what the creators of it do with that whole thing. I see things like the Savage Worlds team having something like 5 of them in-flight now at various stages and I wonder how long that kind of thing can continue. 

• Crowdfunding just feels less awesome than it did ten years ago, for whatever reason. I hope that's just a me thing  and doesn't limit or cap off GR's ultimate success here. 
• In the fall of 2022 they ran a Kickstarter to reprint some of the core books of the M&M 3E line and it barely made the goal - less than half of what they've achieved in a day with this effort - and made zero stretch goals. Now that was a reprint of a known game, not a new edition, so it's not exactly the same thing, and they have done much better this time already, but I do still wonder how many of us are there out there ready to jump on a major superhero game line update? They're doing well but as I write this it's less than 1000 backers. Are we so few?

Speaking of stretch goals ... these are weird. Those first four are 4E updates of some 3E adventures that have come out over the last 5 years or so. Then we get to what looks like an update of  Atlas of Earth Prime but I'm going to guess a limited version, not the full book? I think these are good stretch goals in the sense that they are updates of things that already exist (and so easy to make) but I have to say they aren't exactly inspiring ... at least to me. There's not a lot of "new" here. Stretch goals rarely make any difference to me as to whether I'm going to jump on board something but I've seen some cool ones and these just seem kind of routine? Expected? How about a new villain team, or some exotic new location? I know 3E has a ton of supplements so that any general thing has probably already been covered in one of the books we have but that's why I was thinking something new would be good - show us there are frontiers yet to be explored with this system and not just updates or rehashes of things we already have!

How about "The Book of Omega: The Ultimate Guide to the Ultimate Villain"? We have pieces and parts scattered around different books but let's see an updated, comprehensive work on the guy who killed Centurion.

Alright so there's my negativity addressed and some ideas on how to improve it from my point of view. This team has been making it work for over twenty years at this point so they probably don't need my two cents but I've been right there alongside them and I'd like that to continue for a good long time. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new effort takes us.

40K Friday: The Work Continues - Praetorians and Tyranids

 

My two "building" armies right now both made some progress. Not a ton, but a little.

The new command squads are now on 28mm bases so they won't fit into my 25mm movement trays. I was tempted to put them on 25s but I'm trying to go by current rules so now I get to deal with this. Base size used to be tied to figure size - now apparently it's tied to status. Maybe I'll just velcro them to the damn things.

I did manage to finish the Praetorian command squad, probably the first of 3 or 4. I had to stay with the banner since this one is going into the big combined unit and that +1 OC is a difference maker. For the weapons guy I stuck with a melta gun as I figure it will make the most difference if something gets in close. Having 3 of them altogether should be a bit of a deterrent as even the guard should land a hit or two at that point. For the officer I went with a bolt pistol and a power sword. I just am not that big a fan of a Strength 6 power fist and I don't really like the way it looks on normal humans most of the time. I think of these guys as being more about the swords than maximum efficiency so the power sword is good enough for me and it just looks better! 

At least it will make them easy to tell apart - "Wings Up" and "Wings Down". Years ago with Battletech I had a pair of metal Marauders named "Leans Left" and "Leans Right" so this is not a new thing for me. 

I also finished a pair of "winged tyranid primes" - the character/leader units from the Leviathan set. For itself it only has a bunch of melee attacks but it can join a unit of gargoyles to stiffen them up with "synapse" or a unit of warriors to give them Sustained Hits 1 which is a pretty nice buff.  I wonder if they might be useful just flying around solo doing actions, interfering with gun batteries, or jumping on lone characters. I might try it with one of them.

Modeling-wise I changed up the wings on one of them as the default downward pose is ... fine ... but I certainly wasn't going to have two like that in an army. 

I may have a chance to try them out this weekend as aside from the M&M game I'm also supposed to play Boom-Gun Brother Brandon in some 40K and I'm leaning towards taking the 'Nids. It'll mean throwing a bunch of un-painted and base-coated stuff on the table but that's not exactly uncommon around here. I'm going to try to get a few more units together before that game but even now it's reasonable progress for January. More next week.

Super Saturday: Time of Crisis Session 2 - Where We Really Get the Party Started

 

I ended up with two players out last week, out of my usual six, but it's a superhero game so we pushed on with Plan A. Well, sort of.

As our heroes awaken from the fade to black they sense a lot of nothingness ... and then some rocks ...

They realize something serious has happened while they help each other recover, knowing more is probably coming and that the Terminus is involved. Then something new appears ...

A huge, glowy, floating face (ala original series Star Trek) appears in front of them and introduces herself as the Norn, the Guardian of Life. The Omniverse has been destroyed but she has saved them, now the only remaining superheroes, and intends to undo the end of the Omniverse. To do this they will have to travel to 4 different parallel earths and stop an interdimensional bomb set up there by Omega.  

I am amazed at how different players react to things sometimes and there is a paragraph of notes here about what to do if the players don't get it and throw rocks at the Norn etc. I've had players do stupid things before but once it's been explained to you that EVERYTHING ELSE IS GONE I have a hard time believing that people aren't going to get on board. Yes, it's kind of a railroad but this kind of thing is a definite superhero plot so shake it off and get ready to fix the universe!

My players, knowing they signed up to be superheroes, jump on board and our heroes say "let's go!" and so the Norn sends them to ...

This was another conversation. I have two players out, I have another player coming back for a week who wants to join in and I think we can all agree that fighting Nazis on a parallel earth is about the most fun one can have in a game like this. It's presented as the first stop in the tour and that makes sense as it is the most straightforward one of the bunch. But I wanted to save it until we had full turnout (or more turnout at least) so I opted to run ... well ...

Monkey Planet is another strong entry in "things you will see in superhero comics" so we went with that for this one. Of course I had done absolutely zero prep on this segment so I was winging it in a big way. Fortunately I did have everything in Hero Lab so I at least had 3E stats for everything ready to go. 

As things come back into view our heroes look around and see a fairly normal-looking world. In fact it looks a whole lot like the Freedom City they know and love. That is until they look a little closer  ...

... and see that all of the people around them are some kind of ape! The local cops gather, crowds of passers-by are terrified, and tensions are rising despite the team's efforts until Dr. Simian and the Primate Patrol arrive on the scene. There is a hurried discussion between the team and the Doctor about where they are, why they are here, and what is known of Omega and the Terminus. Immediate violence is averted and all agree to meet at city hall (nearby) to discuss safety measures with the mayor and the chief of police. 

Though the entire place is both fascinated and terrified by our heroes the conversation proceeds efficiently. Early on there are inquiries about where they are from and what it's like there - "does everyone look like you?" is a complicated question when you have two battlesuits, a flaming guy, a frost guy, and two sort-of-normal-looking humans in the mix. Eventually though Dr. Simian announces that he has the Omega bomb in his lab where it is being extensively tested since he is the foremost scientist on the planet and has unmatched facilities and staff. Now that the dangerous nature of the object has been confirmed he wants to take the party to his lab to disarm the bomb. 

Our heroes agree of course but there is some side conversation along the way as Patriot has recognized this Dr. Simian as a total twin of their own Earth's Dr. Simian - a genius villain who in the past has tried to turn all humans into apes. This is an alternate earth, and he has formed a team of superheroes here, but still ... there are suspicions within the party about what he's really up to. 

Soon enough the traveling party arrives at the local Anthropoid Scientific and Technical Research Organization (ASTRO) Labs facility. Beneath this is Dr. Simian's giant underground laboratory which means the group passes through various tunnels, oversized elevators, giant sealed vault-like doors and ends up miles underground in a giant room which contains a giant glowing sphere ...

As the team surveys the lab, the equipment, the lab-coated monkeys working on the equipment, and most importantly the bomb ... from the adventure itself:

Dominating the building’s interior is a huge, red spherical object connected via cables to the various scientific instruments along the walls. The sphere pulses with a weird, crimson energy and makes the air itself crackle.

It is clearly not any normal kind of technology anyone in the room is familiar with but now that the Terminus connection is known some conclusions can be drawn. More machines are activated around the room and our two technical experts offer to toss in their two cents. As they move to examine the thing up close the up til now chatty Primate Patrol members quiet down and begin moving awkwardly towards our heroes all around the room ... "You must not interfere" ...

This of course begins the sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Yes, still trying out the projector. A published adventure usually means maps, so all I have to do is cut them out and then drop them in.

The confrontation starts with MetaMorph shifting to a Bear form and trying to grapple Heavy Metal. This goes about as well as expected and things escalate from there. Brainape attempts to mind-control various characters in turn, Chimpanzoom speed-rushes an area and pummels all within, Elastigibbon uses stretching and spinning punches, Iron Monkey locks in on Red Phoenix with his force beams, and Dr. Simian blazes away with his chair-mounted blasters. 

For our heroes, outnumbered but undaunted, Patriot flies right up to the doctor and starts punching but that forcefield around his flying chair is strong! Heavy Metal blasts Brainape, Red Phoenix returns fire on Iron Monkey, and Onryo starts blasting 'Morph. 

This goes on for a bit with Morph and Brainape dropping fairly quickly. Iron Monkey eventually goes down to combined fire from Red Phoenix and Onryo while Patriot and Metal deal with the others.  As the tide turns Dr. Simian shakes off his feigned confusion and sighs ... "Oh enough of this" and presses a big red button on his chair ...

...the overhead lights immediately change from incandescent white to a pulsing deep purple, and a loud humming sound fills the room. Everyone in the room blacks out under the influence of the inescapable purple light ...

GM Notes

The theme of the night was "rust". I've run this game before, many times. I've run this adventure before, a couple of times. I've run this specific part of this adventure before. Yet I felt like an almost-noob trying to keep this thing moving. It's rare for me to feel this clueless with a game I have chosen to run but it was challenging for the entire session. I have realized since that I have not really run M&M 3E since 2019 and my longer runs were years prior to that so I may have had it in my head that I know how to run this without really considering how much that layoff was going to impact me. It's as if 90% of what I knew about the system just drained away in that time. I felt some of this after the first session and I spent the intervening time reading back thorough the rulebook but once we hit the table it was not easy. 

Some of this was due to the last minute change-up to Earth-Ape. I had not refreshed myself on the scenario or especially on the Primate Patrol's powers ... wow was that a mistake. It's one of the difficulties running a supers game vs. running a D&D type game: I know what a troll or an ogre or a red dragon does in a D&D game. Every hero/villain in a superhero game could (maybe even should) have their own unique set of powers. There are archetypes, of course, but the specifics of each character are often where the fun and the signature moves lie. I was reading some of these statblocks for the first time as the game got started and trying to nail down tactics for six different super-powered characters in real time was just not a great experience - especially for our second game in years. 

Now the good news is that I did know my way around Hero Lab and its tactical console this time which helped immensely. But having easy access to the words and numbers does not equal knowing what to do on a given round with those words and numbers. So it helped, but it did not solve the main problem. 

I also learned that I probably need to look pretty closely at opposition character builds as the Patrol, as-written, was having a very hard time doing anything to my heroes. I think Heavy Metal had a bruise and was dazed thanks to a crit but that was about it. With a bit of tweaking I could have both made the standard expected attacks better and also worked out some creative uses of their powers instead of scrambling just to figure out the basics. For example, in this particular scenario just restraining the heroes in some way is as good as knocking them out and I'm sure between a stretcher, a speedster, and a shapeshifter there was potential there, but I wasn't seeing it. There was also the barely-tapped potential of the mind-controller which should be a big concern to a bunch of non-mentalists but to be fair they did take him down first. Ah well - next time will be better.

The program and the projector did work well, so with actual (and extra!) time to prepare for the next part of the adventure it should roll much more smoothly. Of course I may have 7 players show up next time so I'll have to think of something extra to deal with them all. 

40K Friday: More Praetorians

 

I didn't get a whole lot more done this week - just one more squad of neo-Praetorians. Animal acquisitions took priority this week. So yes we added a few more critters (local cat rescue) and getting them sorted out before the impending deep freeze meant almost no mini-working time. I was trying to get the command squad for this unit done as well and it will probably happen over the weekend as the M&M game will be cancelled due to weather so I will have some extra time. 

IG infantry squads are a little strange now. They start at a 10-man unit but they can go up to 20. Now that's not strange as in prior editions you could go up to 30. The weird quirk is that you get two sergeants, and potentially two comms guys. You also still have the ridiculous weapon restrictions per-squad so it's no more than 2 of any special weapon per 20 man squad when you can take 4 total. So instead of taking say 4 plasma guns you can only take 2, and then the other 2 have to be something else. 

Pretty much took all the options I didn't take in the first squad - Sgt has the autogun, took comms guy, various alternate poses like the grenade-tosser

This is another just plain dumb rule coming from the policy that a squad can only be comprised of what comes in the box. By definition, when building a guard infantry army I am going to be adding multiple boxes of guard infantry. In my case I am aiming for probably 3 of those big squads with a couple of 10-man units available for moving around or riding in chimeras. So around 100 infantrymen. This means I might want to specialize my squads into particular loadouts. Among other things this makes them easier to run as taking say, a pair of melta guns means I have one extra weapon type to worry about. Instead, what we get is having to take a melta and a grenade launcher (this is in one 10-man squad) which means I have two weapon stat lines to track alongside the ever-present lasguns. It could be worse - check out Plague Marine squad options sometime - but in a guard army which tends to be all about uniformity it really stands out. 

With 10th edition they brought back leaders joining units - which  I like - but with guard it's not just individual characters. You can have a 5-man command squad join up, which gives you a 25-man unit, and then you can have another character join it - like a commissar or a castellan or something similar. So one "squad" ends being a 26-man unit with all kinds of different guns and gear and special rules mixed in. I mean, it's kind of cool to have this level of customization in 10th - as it's rare these days - but it is a little strange to put it together as a new component in 2026. Oh, and you can then add in an ogryn bodyguard too, so 27 men, er, "unit members".

Inspiration

Then of course the command squad causes further weapon loadout chaos as two of the five members can take special weapons ... and the set comes with 2 complete sets of each: flamer, plasma, melta, grenade launcher. There are no restrictions on doubling up. So a 10-man infantry squad can only take one of any given type, but a 5-man command squad can take two?!

Now one of the tropers who can take a special weapon is also the guy who starts with a banner so in a big squad like I'm talking about here the +1 OC is almost required. An OC bump on a 20-something man unit is just too potent to ignore. But  ... you don't have to merge your command squads into another squad - they can run around on their own, say in a vehicle, and that would be a good place to take double plasma, for instance. 

Though this does mean that if most of my command squads are going into large ground-pounding infantry squads, well, I'm going to have an extra set of special weapons left over from each. Those sure would look nice in the hands of say, another line trooper in there ... but no. GW says that's just too much!

So you could end up with a 27-man squad with 4 melta guns, 2 grenade launchers, 16 lasguns, 3 pistols of various types, possibly an autogun on one of the sergeants, and a ripper gun on the ogryn. Simple, eh?

And yes, I'm the guy that bought 4 combat patrols when I found a deal a year or two back so I have options and I doubt I'm the only one to do that ... it's the Guard! You can't go small building a guard army! I have a fair amount of older stuff but I'm trying to start fresh with this army and make it conform to all of the modern ... innovations ... of 10th and 11th edition 40K ... however that turns out. 

And for any old-timers that might be wondering no, you can't flip two guys to a heavy weapons team in each squad anymore. They only come in the separate unit now. It was not always the best choice even in the old days but it was an easy way to drop a lascannon into your gunline and have it shielded by the rest of the squad. Not anymore!

Anyway there's the latest on the Praetorian Project! More next week!

Super Saturday: Time of Crisis Session 1

 

Well it wasn't exactly a first session of Time of Crisis specifically but the campaign is underway!

Starting off a superhero campaign means a little more character examination and discussion - for me anyway - than say, a D&D type game. So we spent a little time pre-game discussing characters but I didn't get names, concepts, or Hero Lab files for most of them until the night before the game so we did a lot of it after everyone arrived. This ended up being a lot of "Ok what are you thinking here?" type discussions about each character. I have 6 players so 6 characters so ... 

U.S. Patriot conferring with allies

• Paladin Steve is playing "U.S. Patriot", a Superman-with-a-touch-of-Captain-America character whose origin is tied in with Centurion, Freedom City's Superman analogue. This character has shown up in almost every roll-your-own superhero game I've run for the last 20 years and is also his City of Heroes main so I have a pretty good idea of who he is and what he does as does the player. In many ways this is the easiest of the bunch because I know this guy. This character has been around in-game for about two years so is somewhat known as a hero. His big coming out party was The Battle on the Bay Bridge.
• Shootist Will is playing "Red Phoenix", a fire guy with the expected flying/blasting/damage aura/make fire stuff type powers ala Human Torch. It's a little funny because the first super Will made in one of my games was around 20 years ago for a Necessary Evil campaign and was a fire guy ... who died in the first session (the prison breakout) after using all of his bennies for offense. This is a lesson that is revisited every time we start a new Savage Worlds game. Hopefully this fire blaster lives a little longer. He has a secret identity, is independently wealthy, and is new in town.
• Variable Dave is playing "White Out", a frost/ice guy that's somewhere between Frozone and older Bobby Drake. He has the expected ice slide/create/control/blast/armor type powers. He also has a rivalry with Phoenix that is already developing on their first meeting. This is a new character for Dave so it will be fun to see how he shapes up and he is also new in-game and not really known to anyone.
• Battletech Terry is playing  "Onryo" an anime-style Battlesuit with strength, armor, life support, flight, blasting, and a bunch of sensory and comm systems. His character looks a lot like the battlesuit archetype with a few tweaks mechanics-wise but he's going for a more anime-style theme and look. There is the obligatory complicated backstory though she is effectively a new hero in-game and the character is originally from Japan.
• Blaster is playing "Heavy Metal", a traditional Iron Man style battlesuit with protection/flight/strength but his two main weapons are a set of retractable speakers that can blast non-lethal sonic attacks over a wide area and then a set of missile launchers for more lethal situations. He is the son of a rock star who went into engineering and ended up working on a battlesuit project. This was the same project Onryo was working on but it ended up going badly at one point and she was blamed for a disaster that was really caused by a rival company. They ended up making different suits from the same base technologies but neither knows that the other one did that ... which could get interesting later. 
• Grognard Mike is playing "Providence", a witch/wizard/mystic type character is tied in to a lot of modern mythology. She knows some basic magic but has discovered a knack for tapping in to talismans for specific powers. She has flight and protection abilities and then a whole bunch of attacks and senses and a nullify and invisibility and  ... you get the picture. Mike knows the system better than any other player and ends to make characters that don't fit into an easy categorization and has done exactly that here. I can already tell this is going to be boundary-pushing line-stepping challenge of the game. Most of her powers are built into an array where each talisman is one line item in the array and while the cap is about 25 points based on what's there now you can do a ton with a wide set of 25 point powers that you pay 1 point each to have available. I haven't had a character start with quite this much of an array before  - there are about ten powers in it now - and I can see it becoming a problem but I'm going to trust in the system and see how it goes for a while before I declare it one.

Those are my six heroes for this campaign. Let's see if everyone makes it ...

There was a lot of rust to shake off. We've played M&M 3E many times over the years but it has been years since we last played so we all needed a refresher. So we started with a normal spring day in Freedom City ... when a call goes out over police radio about a disturbance at the First National Bank of Freedom City. I had my players start discussing what they would be doing on a typical work day and how they would hear about problems in the city. Soon enough six figures are flying (or ice-sliding) towards the trouble spot.

Inside, a huge humanoid figure is bellowing orders as a pair of costumed types and some normal-looking people with guns herd workers and customers towards the back. "I AM OGRE! I AM STRONGEST! NOW PUT MONEY IN BAGS!" 

 Red Phoenix is first on the scene and he flies through the doors and blasts one of the caped types while scanning the rest of the scene. The caped guy with the star on his chest recovers from the shot and blasts back with his own fiery attack which does little to nothing to phoenix. Soon Patriot zooms in and goes straight for Ogre. White Out doubles up with Phoenix to take out the other fire guy (Starburst). Heavy Metal moves in behind the teller counter and blasts some of the thugs with his sonic attack. Onryo starts zapping thugs while Providence teleports into the bank and begins herding hostages through her portal to safety. 

The fight continues for a bit with the main result being a ton of property damage to the bank as fire and ice blasts, gunshots, and blaster bolts shoot all over the place. The civilians are mostly safe, the thugs are mostly down, and there are various levels of bruises/stuns/dazes to the heroes and villains when everything goes black and our heroes feel very very strange ... which is where we will pick up next week! 

GM Notes

I always like to start off a supers campaign with a bank robbery. It's a classic timeless scenario with a limited scope, a limited physical space, good starting hero dilemmas with the potential for hostage-taking, negotiations, police involvement, confusion between heroes and villains, and a chance for major property damage. You can mix in some normal thugs to let the PC's show off alongside some villains to give them a challenge. Every city has banks so it's not some exotic location and everyone has been inside one so players have some idea what they look like and the general features, layout, and vibe. I've found it to be a great intro session for a game like this.

This particular crew is a nod to the old Champions intro with Ogre robbing a bank. In that example, Starburst and Crusader are new heroes trying to stop him. For this I just made them bad guys and tweaked the energy projector and crime fighter archetypes and went with that. Most of my players had no idea of the connection but it made me happy so it worked for me.

I had 3 villains, 6 thugs, 6 heroes, and a placeholder for hostages so there were a lot of actors in this one. I was using HeroLab to manage the combat and it was just as useful as I remembered - once I started remembering how to use it. You can put the initiative order and some basic stats out into a separate window which helps the players see who is going when. It also tracks conditions so I can see that Starburst is Dazed and has two bruises and I can also hove over "Dazed" to see what it means in game terms. With the amount of powers and conditions flying around in this kind of game I find it useful to have this kind of thing on-hand. I do not normally run my games with a laptop at the table but for a few games I do and this is one of them and the availability and utility of this tool is why.

I also tried a new trick with drawing the scene this time. I am a dyed in the wool battlemat and markers guy but I picked up a projector while we were off for December and I spent some time figuring out how to make it work - and then spent more time pre-game on Saturday fine-tuning it with Blaster. The result was that I used that map graphic up top for our bank map for this session. I had it projecting on to a battlemat so we could draw in AoE's and things  - Phoenix is already walling people off with fire walls - but that's the only drawing we did. I think a modern supers game is a great place to try this out as I don't have to worry about light sources and fog of war too much - I can just show the whole map and it's not a big deal. This was a very basic attempt showing a static image of a common well-known location and it was a little clunky making it all work but I will be playing around with my options as we go forward with the campaign and hopefully getting much smoother with it.

This isn't mine but you get the idea of what you could do

So anyway there was a big learning curve this session, partly self-inflicted, but we had a good time. Everyone seems happy with their character and with each other so it's a good way to start the year and the campaign. I have a ton of homework to do  - like reading a bunch of rulebooks. I felt so slow! I need to work on both Hero Lab and the projector options now that I have tried them in the heat of battle. I also need to think through the table setup more now that I know all the things we will be using. Hell, I don't even have a real name for this campaign yet so I'll be overthinking that too. It's a busy week.

Campaign kickoff accomplished and more to come! Session 2 is tonight!

40K Friday: The Praetorian Adventure Begins

  

Last week I was a little tired of building Tyranids and I was sitting there in my hobby room and I just decided there was no reason not to go ahead and start building my new Imperial Guard army. Sure, there's some splitting of effort n that case but I've been hitting the 'nids pretty hard and I don't want to burn out on them. Plus I want to make sure that my concept is going to work and that it looks good so I needed to see some examples built. So I did ...

Those are modern/current guard infantry models with head swaps to the Wargames Atlantic "Bulldogs" pith helmet heads.  I built a full squad to see how it would all fit together.

Now imagine them with red jackets, white helmets ... like those guys up above.

I was worried that the heads might not look right but after putting a squad together I think they look just fine - the helmets stick up more so they do have a different profile but that's kind of the point, right? I love that they come with backpacks right there in the kit now for everyone but the sergeant as that does add something to the look. I think these new troopers fit the Praetorian look even better than the older plastic Cadians. 

And yes, this is not a new thing for 40K. People have been making custom guard regiments by mixing and matching parts for years, especially head swaps. Hell those original versions up above are just head-swapped Mordian Iron Guard, albeit done at the pre-casting stage. These guys have had a surge of interest in recent years with many options coming out for pith-helmeted-Victorian-looking space troopers. That boxed set and the huge "Battle of Big Toof River" thing back in the late 90's really stuck with some of us. The Wargames Atlantic ones are the ones I like most right now as each sprue comes with multiple head options so I can use the piths for this army and with the rest of this kit I can build some very Mordian looking troopers as well! Circle of life right? 

So my thinking here is a mostly infantry & artillery based gunline army for the core of the force. I have some sentinels and some rough riders to add in for some mobility. I also have 3 ogryn squads I'm leaning towards putting into some custom chimeras just to mix things up as well - and yes, I do have ogre-sized pith helmets for them. I want to get more built before I really start locking in to a certain force org but that's the pencil sketch concept for now.

There will also be tanks...

I have a Leman Russ company + set aside to team up with this army going with the desert-ish paint scheme. I like my red-coated infantry but I like my tanks too and the guard have a lot of cool ones. I'm actually ahead on getting those done - mostly because they're easier to get to this stage. I like the idea of being able to go mostly infantry with some tank support or mostly tanks with some infantry support - it should be fun. 

One thing I had to accept early on is that this army will be very much not a Warhammer store-friendly force. Lots of 3rd party bits, kitbashes, and 3D printed vehicles and bits as well. Now this is not really something I care about a great deal as I don't play in their stores or go to their tournaments but it was a little bit of a weird feeling as it already will have more custom work than even my orks at this stage. I have a lot of old stuff in my orks but most of it is GW - or at least it's made from GW parts. This army is just straight up whatever fits the very specific look I want. 

For now I'm thinking slow and steady progress. 10th edition guard (and presumably later) can deploy as a combined unit of two 10-man squads plus a 5-man command squad plus a leader officer of some type so I'm going to try and get the rest of one of those done this month alongside more tyranids and see how quickly I can get some kind of playable force. I'm not worried about points at all yet, just getting the parts into shape.

More to come!