Tonight I am starting off our first extended superhero run in years. I should have 6 players which means we should be resilient enough attendance-wise that we will run every week, barring GM incapacitation (or GM wife demands). It's been a long time coming, so I thought I would note down how I settled on these options.
The System:
I like M&M 3E. Yes it's crunchy. Yes it has a lot of its own systemic quirks. Also yes it plays pretty fast once your characters are built and yes it is one of the most ridiculously well-supported games out there. The combat plays out a lot like Savage Worlds in my opinion as it's not about an extended hit point beat down but about overcoming a toughness threshold and inflicting conditions and it can seem like it's going to be a long fight and then suddenly it's over! It's sometimes hard for people to grasp coming over from a d20/D&D type game when so much of the rest of the system looks familiar but it's worth that learning curve! It should feel different and it does. This is a feature, not a bug.
I did consider different systems - I'm looking at this as a longer commitment than just the one adventure run. I've been reading back through a lot of Champions books and I still love that game. I thought about doing Necessary Evil - using the aforementioned Savage Worlds. Every time I look at the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG I get ideas on how that could go. But considering how low-mileage M&M is with us, and for this group of players in particular, and with a new edition coming, it just felt right to make this year a re-introduction to M&M and a farewell tour to 3rd Edition and then potentially after a year of campaigning, a transition to 4th edition.
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| No, not that crisis! |
The Adventure:
As I've mentioned before I really don't like most published superhero adventures But Time of Crisis is one that I really do. It hits on so many comic book tropes in one run that it just feels right and as it's mostly set outside of your normal campaign framework it's easy to drop in to mark say, an edition change, or a major campaign change, or ... to start one off and not worry about continuity with what has gone before. While I feel most supers campaigns benefit from having adventures tied to your particular PC's - probably a throwback to the days of Hunteds and DNPCs in Champions - this one just that good and there is plenty of room to improvise along the way to add in things like that.
The potential for changing up the campaign in the aftermath of this event is not going to be super useful here since I am using it to start things off but I still like it as a clean slate opportunity. Some of the PC's have been in my various prior M&M efforts over the years and this will let us clean up our own "continuity" into one ongoing timeline. It may not matter to some of my players but it helps me keep things straight in my head. The action during the crisis event is also a good excuse for character tweaks as everyone figures out how the game works again and might want to make some adjustments as we go.
The structure also lends itself nicely to an ongoing campaign. There are 5 major chapters: An intro in the existing campaign, 3 different parallel earths, and then a big finale back on your own world. Hopefully everyone can make it for the beginning and the climax but they can come and go in between and it shouldn't break anything. I have some ideas for another parallel world if I need it - i.e. if they screw up badly - but they are pretty smart so hopefully we won't need it.
The Setting:
I have liked Freedom City since it came out as a setting for 1st Edition M&M. I think it is the definitive super city setting for an RPG campaign. I have used it in the past going back to second edition before this blog ever started.
The downside of using something like this is that there is a lot of material in that book - more with every edition - and it can look overwhelming. There are elements of it that I don't or don't find particularly compelling for the kind of campaign that I want to run despite my appreciation for it overall. There are a lot of arguments to be made for using your own homebrew super city and it's not like I don't have some of those. Not using my own place feels like a missed opportunity in some ways.
The thing to keep in mind with a work like this is that overkill is kind of the point! The trick is to pick out the pieces that you do really like and put those front and center and don't worry too much about the rest. If I'm not planning to run a school-based campaign then I don't need tons of detail on Claremont Academy but if someone wants to use that kind of thing in their background, well, I have names and places and dates for them to work with.
The upside is that there a lot of cool, excellent elements of the city that I do like and want to use and I should, finally, be able to do that. For having played around with it over so many years we've never really had a long steady run with it to let us get our hands dirty with the place. If someone does want to tie in to some team or organization or even a particular hero I have a ready reference for them and as random as players can be I think it's handy to have details ready on the fly.
The support factor is also important. There is an Atlas of Earth Prime that describes the rest of the world - handy if needed. There is a Cosmic book for space threats/allies/adventure. The neat thing is that I can decide how much of the stuff in those is true and again focus on the parts I think are cool and ignore the parts I don't. Plus it's the main M&M setting - I need to get in there and punch it up a bit and see how much I really like it in the heat of actual play.
So there is the thinking behind the decisions for this one. I'm still working out some of what I want to focus on but since it will be a few sessions before we are actually in Freedom City I have time to think. Some of it will be driven by my players and what they want to do and I wont have a good feel for the group direction until after this first session at least. I don't have a name for it yet but I will try to do session summaries as we go this time instead of letting them stack up.
I do love this pre-game planning and speculation so I am pretty happy right now and looking forward to starting it up.
