Well I suppose it was inevitable. It has been 15+ years since M&M 2E became M&M 3E (well, "DC Adventures, -then- M&M3) and that's a ridiculously long run for one edition of an RPG.
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| I thought Cam Banks' comments were funny so I left them in |
I am happy to see something new that's big for M&M as it's been slow to quiet for a long time in the new product department. Some renewed activity should be a lot of fun. I am also very happy that Steve K is running it. I am a fan of his work.
That said I am heavily invested in 3rd Edition and I am not all that excited at buying a 4th iteration of the Freedom City sourcebook, or an expanded powers book, or a villain sourcebook if it's just a reprint of all the villains we already have and know. I have everything they printed for 2E and 3E and both of those are flat-out comprehensive rulesets for running a superhero campaign. I'm not sure what a new edition is going to improve and I hope they have some good new ideas to share and we are not going to see the same set of books we already have with some slightly tweaked mechanics.
There were some mechanical things in 3rd that could benefit from some adjustment - the effectiveness of Toughness versus Defense is a big one. I always thought a "revised 3E" rulebook could have probably taken care of those kinds of wrinkles. I recall SK stating years ago that if he did ever do a new edition that he would go back to pre-built powers in the core book and save the power building for a separate book - like 2nd Edition - and agree with that choice. It's bound to be confusing for people looking for an Energy Blast power or a Web power being directed over to the "Damage" or the "Affliction" powers. From a design perspective it makes a lot of sense but from the "intuitive" sense it's a little trickier. I've seen a rumor that they are doing away with Dexterity and Fighting as separate stats and presumably going back to Agility as the baseline? That would be a move back towards the D&D standard ability spread which is probably smart in the "D&D is everything" environment we live in now and it worked for 2nd Edition so it's probably fine.
I guess that's at the heart of any trepidation I have over a 4th edition: Are we doing this because we have some great ideas to make the game better after 15 years of publishing and tinkering with it? Or are we looking for a cash flow bump? There's nothing wrong with that in general but it's not a great reason to reboot a game line - for the players, anyway. For now I will trust this team, based on their excellent track record, that they are doing this for the right reasons.
Oh look, there are some notes going around the internet:
... and one more interesting bit of news:
Ongoing projects like the Event Horizon and the Vigilantes Handbook are still launching for 3rd Edition, serving as the final curtain call for a long and beloved era. Event Horizon will even offer GMs the opportunity to end their 3E campaign with a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style cataclysm or a seamless pivot into 4E.
For me this does add some urgency to getting that next campaign going. I've worked in a fair amount of superhero gaming the last ten-twenty years but it's mostly been short runs and one-offs with M&M, Icons, Marvel Heroic, Marvel Superheroes, and Marvel Multiverse. I haven't run a sustained super-campaign in a long time and I feel like this is signaling to me that this is a good time to really get my hands dirty with 3E for an extended time before the new version comes out. Now to figure out how to incorporate Time of Crisis into this ...
One last early plea: Put the Knockback rules back in the core book as a standard thing - it's too iconic of a comic book thing to make them optional!
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