Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - Combat Discussion

 

Initial discussion in the previous post.

OK let's look at some of these new combat interactions. First up the general Degree of Success chart:

A critical hit here (Nat 20) adds one degree of success
A critical miss (Nat 1) adds a degree of failure

• Hits and misses are determined using a d20 + your relevant attack bonus vs. a DC of 10 + your Defense score. As long as you get a success - meet or exceed the target DC - you have scored a hit on the target and now you need to check for damage.
• An extra success here adds 5 to the Effect rank
• An extra failure here, if it somehow still hits, gives the target a +5 on their Resistance check
  
  
• Damage is handled by rolling the d20 + your toughness rank vs a target of 10+ damage rank. That's a change from the 15 + damage of 3E. Then Degrees of Success enter the fray:
• Success (two or more degrees): If the target has Hardened, Impervious, or Impenetrable resistance against the attack and this degree of success, they receive no damage conditions. Otherwise, this is the same as one degree of success.
• Success (one degree): The target receives the Hit condition. For each Hit condition, apply a –1 penalty to the character’s further resistance checks against Damage.
  
• Failure (one degree): The target receives a Hit condition, and the Dazed condition. If the target already has the Dazed condition, it becomes Stunned instead.
  Compared to 3E this adds Dazed - in 3E this was just a -1 to future Toughness checks
• Failure (two degrees): The target receives a Hit condition, the Stunned condition, plus the Staggered condition.
  In 3E this was just Dazed & a -1
• Failure (three degrees): The target receives the Hit and Staggered conditions, plus the Incapacitated condition. If an Incapacitated character fails a Damage resistance check, their condition becomes Dying. If a Dying character fails a Damage resistance check by any degree, they are Dead.
  In 3E this was just Staggered and a -1, and an additional Staggered result went to Incapacitated which could then go to Dying and then to Dead in the same way.
  
  Some significant changes here: From 3E the target number has dropped by 5, but the table has bumped everything up a notch for starters. Then we add in Hits being cumulative so even resisting the damage to a degree means they are still piling up. I like this as it puts more of a clock on the combat. 3E had a similar condition but it was only applied on a failure. Now with it applying to at least some successful saves it will accumulate that much faster. It also adds a benefit to doing really well on a Toughness check as you avoid this cumulative penalty. Players tend to be disappointed when they roll really well and there is no additional benefit to it so this feeds right into the drama of each roll. 
  
  (Also, this is starting to look like Savage Worlds' system a bit - "Hit", or "Hit and a Raise to add damage", failing the save by more causes a worse effect, etc. Lot of parallels there.)

Let's talk about Conditions real quick. Beyond "Hits" the damage table can make you:

• Dazed - One standard action, no reactions, still get free actions. 
• Stunned - No actions at all and Dodge rank is halved. I'm wondering if this is correct or if it's supposed to affect Defense scores as well? In 3E it was just the "no actions" part so I don't know. 
• Staggered - Dazed and Hindered (that means half movement speed)
• Incapacitated - Stunned, Unaware, Defenseless, and usually Prone. This is the KO you're looking for in a fight.
• Dying - Incapacitated and making death saves ala D&D 5E. 

Characters might be Resistant to a particular attack - that means they cut the effect ranks in half before making the roll. Immunity means you make no roll at all - so you won't be accumulating hits from those attacks. Susceptible means you have a penalty to resistance checks of half the incoming effect rank. Weakness is that plus your best result is one degree of failure on the check.

With the basics out of the way, let's say our Battlesuit faces off against their evil twin - how does that go?

• Evil Battlesuit flies up and blasts Justice Battlesuit:
•  Evil shoots with a d20+8 (Their Attack of 8 is the modifier here) against a Defense Class of 18 (the target's Defense of 8 + the basic 10). Needing an 18, an average roll will get them a 10-11 and so they hit!
• To resist damage Justice will be rolling a d20 + 12 (their Toughness) with a target of 22 (base 10 + 12 for the Rank 12 Force Beams). Another average 10-11 roll here will match that target for a success and while it is Hardened it is Rank 11 while the force beams are Rank 12 so no extra roll and Justice will take a Hit even with the success. 

This could go on for a while but at least those -1's will be piling up until someone gets lucky.

Let's say Justice has been rendered Vulnerable by some other attack or event. The Vulnerable condition reduces Defense by half so he would be a DC14 to hit - you just need an slightly better average roll of 11 + 8 (Attack Bonus) = 19 which is 5 over and so an added success on an attack check which increases the Blast Effect by 5.

Now the resistance target will be 27 (base 10 + 12 + 5) and an average roll for Justice will give us 11 + 12 (Toughness) = 23. That's a failure so he will be Hit + Dazed.

Clearly Vulnerable is a good thing to have on your side and outside of any powers it comes up when one is Surprised: "A surprised character is Stunned and Vulnerable, caught off-guard and unable to act. Surprised normally only lasts for one round." So there's one way to set things up in your favor.

It looks to me like combat could go on a bit but with those Hits stacking up on most attacks it should go quicker than 3E's combat. I do wonder about the effect of numbers now, both with a team of PC's attacking a single villain and with a group of mooks ganging up on one PC, and will that make for a significant impact in a fight.

Final point for today: One of the long time debates in 3E is over Defense versus Toughness. Many players thought Toughness was just better, as far as game effectiveness in 3E, and while that's not everything it did come up fairly frequently. Here's why: 

• Toughness is not reduced by Vulnerable or Defenseless Conditions
• Toughness is not ignored by Perception or Area Effects
• Toughness increase is 1/2 the PP cost of Dodge/Parry increase 

Most of these are still true. The only exception is that while an overall Defense is still 2 pts to Protection's 1 pt, you could raise either ranged or close defense for 1 pt per level. Despite this list remaining true I feel like the other adjustments to the way damage works alongside the Defensive Roll update should help balance this out. Against area effect attacks the 4E version of Evasion gives a +5 to avoid with 1 rank and "no damage on a success" with 2 ranks so there's another way to mitigate that. 

Defenseless is just bad for everyone, and Vulnerable is still mainly bad for Defense-shifted characters. The other consideration is that Vulnerable is still a first degree condition for the Affliction power so it's not too hard to land on someone. I'd say until I see a problem in-game that it's just something you need to be aware of.

That's all for now but I do want to try out some more combat examples. Look for that down the road a bit. Please feel free to check my math and thinking here too and let me know if you see something off.

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Playtest - First Impressions

 

Alright I've read it. I haven't tried to run it yet or make a new character, I just compared some old ones and looked at possible changes but I need to dig in a little more and have some of my players update their old characters too, just to give it a workout. My short take is: it's an evolution, not a revolution.

It's more like 3E in my opinion than 3E was to 2E. I was thinking the loss of the Fighting and Dexterity stats was an indicator of larger changes but I don't feel like it turned out that way. There are a lot of smaller changes and adjustments and tweaks but the basic structure of the game and of characters is very similar. 

4th Edition Battlesuit Archetype

3rd Edition Battlesuit Archetype

Comparing the two you can see that it works pretty much the same way - both provide enhanced Protection , flight via boot jets, life support, radio comms, a sensor suite, some combat computer enhancements, and then a two-power array to throw power into either blaster beams or enhanced strength. Many of the point costs are quite similar and many of the ability scores are the same (and if you're wondering the number after the slash is the "out of the suit" number). The game is still a d20 + modifiers vs a target DC or a contest of rolls so the basic framework of the game is the same as well. You still have power levels and there are still limits related to it like Defense & Toughness needing to add up to PLx2. 

Now there are some differences:

•  Right up front Fighting and Dexterity have been shifted over into a different set of stats: Attack and Defense. Instead of a built-in split between Melee and Ranged capabilities here the default is now that you have one number for both. You can certainly split those up through various means to have a lower default and then a bonus on either Ranged or Melee or unarmed or a specific weapon type to have more of a focus for your character, but you don't have to. I actually do like this change as it will be simpler for someone new to see and I think it's just a clearer label overall. Who knew you could have a superhero game with one Offensive Combat Value and one Defensive Combat Value? 
• The defensive numbers are rearranged a bit. Toughness is still your damage save, and Fortitude/Dodge/Will are now strictly your other "saves". Parry goes away as you just use your Defense for your to-be-hit target now.
• Advantages have changed in many places too. 
• There are more types of advantages and each type can have some limitations or conditions. For example Heroic is a new class of Advantage and characters are limited to half Power Level in ranks of these - because they are more powerful.
• In 3E there was a set of combat maneuvers one could do - Accurate Attack to trade damage down to increase attack bonus, All-Out Attack to trade Defense for an attack bonus, its opposite Defensive Attack to trade hit bonus for improved defense, etc. - and these gave a +/-2, but if you took the related Advantage gave a +/-5.
  In 4E these maneuvers now just grant a straight-up +/-5, no Advantage needed, so these moves will be more consequential. Note that this is "up to +/-5", not automatically the maximum bonus. So the maneuvers are better and the Advantages related to them are gone.
• Defensive Roll is better now as it still adds +1 Toughness per rank but also gives the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened (see below). You lose that extra when Vulnerable or Defenseless but keep the Toughness - unlike 3E. You do lose all of it when Stunned though so it's not a perfect replacement for pure Toughness which makes sense.
• Finally let's talk about Improvised Effect. This is a new one that is really the gateway to the variable power effects so many players love and so many GM's hate. The description is innocent enough: You can use a technical skill to prepare and use Improvised Effects. Now it's tied to one skill like Technology or Magic but you can take it more than once to cover more skills. This is a Heroic advantage so it is limited by PL but this is your gadget pool or magic crafting ability right here. Looking it over again I don't believe it requires any additional power points, like a pool, but it does calculate the points required and that does affect the skill roll needed to create and use the effect, plus they are only good for one scene, so this might be OK after all. That said, it's potentially a lot of flexibility for a highly skilled character for all of one point.
  
  

  

  Absolutely love this artwork

  
  
• For Powers the degree of change depends on the power. Some changed a great deal, some barely changed at all. You can see here that even the point costs are very similar for most of this character's powers. One significant change is with Protection and the options one can apply, so let's look at that one more closely:
• Protection itself is still a Permanent Defense so the default assumption is "armor" of some kind and it's +1 Toughness per rank. You can make it sustained instead if you want a more force-fieldy power, etc. But for Extras we now have Hardened, Impervious, and Impenetrable.
• Hardened: If the damage coming in is at or below your ranks of Hardened resistance then you roll two dice and take the highest - so basically our Battlesuit here in 4E has advantage on damage saves at rank 11 or less. I like that this is now an option. There is a second clause though: If you get two or more degrees of success on the save then you take no damage conditions including Hits, which is a new thing I will discuss below. I like this though -  something better than standard protection but not immune to a bunch of stuff.
• Impervious: This continues much like it did before where a character is just immune to incoming damage at or below their Impervious Protection rank. Note that last part - equal to or less than ... not half! Now it is capped at Power Level and it does cost 2 per rank instead of 1, but ridiculously resistant Bricks are certainly back! This one also has the "no effects with a 2+ degrees of success" like Hardened.
• Impenetrable: This is the same as Impervious but ignores Penetrating. Alright, let's look at that.
• There are several levels of defense in M&M. One of those is "Resistant" which means you take half of the damaging effect. "Fire Blast 10" is effectively "Fire Blast 5" to a Fire Resistant target.
• "Immune" means you are unaffected by attacks based on whatever you are immune to. If you are Immune to fire then "Fire Blast Whatever" means nothing to you.
• Except ... ranks of "Penetrating" ignore some of this. If our Battlesuit with Force Beams 12  shoots them at Dr. Impervious (Impervious Protection 15) he does nothing. If he upgrades to Force Beams 12 with 6 ranks of Penetrating and hits then Doc Impervious is going to be rolling to resist rank 6 damage - so a DC16 Toughness check. Penetrating doesn't add anything to your attack - it just ensures some of it gets through. Unless the target is Impenetrable  - then you are out of luck.
  
  You can add these modifiers on to your normal Toughness too -  you don't have to buy Protection to unlock them.
  
  Now you're not going to take all 3 of them on one character as they overlap. If our Battlesuit took Impervious 11 on their Protection then Hardness becomes redundant as it's giving you Advantage on a roll you're never going to make. Same with Impenetrable - it's the highest level of defense.
  
  Now you might take more than one to represent some kind of layered defense. Say, Protection 11 with Impervious for 6 ranks and then Hardened for 11 - that would mean you don't even have to roll against the smaller stuff, then you get Advantage up through the remaining ranks. I don't know that it's cost effective but it would still help against Penetrating attacks with the extra roll. Say you get hit with a Blast 5 (Penetrating 3). The Impervious 6 would normally stop it but Pen 3 means you have to roll against a DC13. Hardened would give you the extra d20 for that.
  
  By wording it would also give you the "2+ degrees of success = no damage conditions) as Penetrating specifically mentions negating only Resistance and Impervious but I'm not sure that's the intent.
  
  It's interesting. I suspect my Battlesuit player will be digging into all of this a lot.
  
  

  

  No not him ...

  
  
• Regeneration is one I've seen people complain about with 3E and in 4E it's a lot simpler. There is a table that lists what it does for each rank and I do really really like the clarity:
• Rank 1 is "Recover your least Severe Damage Condition every 10 rounds". 
• This improves by 1 round per rank until at Rank 10 you're dropping one every round, then it goes to multiple conditions removed per rank.
• Then at 15 you start recovering from being Dead in ever-decreasing increments of time up to Rank 20 where you recover from everything every turn. Nicely done Green Ronin! 
• Yes there is still a Variable Power, there are about two pages of discussion on it, and the described way of handling it is excellent. Unlike the Advantage this one is based on a pool of points. That said I will leave this one with the last sentence in the sidebar discussion for this power: In short, Variable is a “last resort” in power design, and the GM should treat it as such.

So lots of interesting changes without too much being drastically different. I do want to check on the Defense-is-inferior-to-Toughness debate as I'm still not sure about that one so let's work through a combat example tomorrow and see how it works now.

Super Saturday - Bad Takes on Some Super Systems

 

First up: yes I did get the M&M 4E playtest and yes I'm working my through it. More to come next week on that.

That said in the lead-up to its release I re-read the 3E rules and then that spilled over to Champions as well and I spent a lot of time seeing where people stood on 4th vs. 5th vs. 6th edition for that game as I had really not paid attention to it up until now as an online discussion. Doing that led me to some other items of potential interest like the Spectaculars game. I was vaguely aware of it but had never really studied it and I don't own it yet.

Now Spectaculars looks interesting so I spent some time poking around for reviews and actual play reports of it and that led me to a now-defunct blog where the writer wrote up some articles about older superhero games leading up to a report on Spectaculars. Now I don't want to turn this into a dispute with an individual so I'm not linking to the blog here but I want to use it as an example of how some of these games are perceived by some people in a more general sense and how some internet groupthink seeps in and how time screws with perceptions as well.

The writer in question started with Marvel Super Heroes - nothing wrong with that, a lot of people did. He credits it with being easy to understand for young players - sure, totally agree. He then turns and says there wasn't much of a character generation system with it being a lot of random rolling and making a few limited choices ... and this is where I veer away hard from this take. 

Hmmm, random rolls and limited choices? Sounds a lot like D&D! The dominant RPG at the time! And now! Also Runequest, Traveller, and many other games of the time! We made a bunch of characters with it and played for several years. I wasn't going to but I have to insert a quote here:

"For me it did also set out the fundamental template for superhero RPGs – all fun in different ways, but all having different and significant flaws."

I could not disagree more. This mostly ignores the revolutionary take on task resolution with the color chart system among many other things and the more general fact that superhero RPGs are where you find a lot of the innovation and fresh thinking that happens in RPGs. They have to, because they have to encompass the widest range of possibilities, the widest scope for a game.

"Overall the Marvel RPG was simple and fun, but really lacked any depth and longevity."

I just ... how does one get to this point? It so lacked longevity that people have been maintaining websites for it  for almost three decades after it went out of print. It is regularly referenced as an important game and served as inspiration for everything from retroclones to Icons. I played in long loose campaigns with friends and I would run it tomorrow if someone asked. It's a bad take. 

I will note that the author does not appear to have gone back and picked up a copy, looked back through other peoples notes on it, or played or run it anytime recently - this was strictly memories of it from the 80's.

He moves on to DC Heroes, calling it "much more technically polished than the Marvel game" - was it? It was more complex but that's a take I haven't seen if we're talking 1st edition DCH. I think it was perceived as a more sophisticated game at the time as in "not aimed at kids as much as the Marvel game" so I'll agree if that's the real take.  He seems to like it better than Marvel but then we get to  points, gadgets, and this take:

"This would highlight a design pattern bug in most superhero systems involving points:  if your super widget can be lost/stolen/damaged then system designers seemed to think that they should always cost you less of your character points during generation otherwise a gadget hero would always be disadvantaged.  Then again if this discount is too high then gadget heroes seem to have an advantage over others."

Yes ... a power that can be taken away easily are less valuable than one that cannot. That seems incredibly obvious to me. Yes, it does depend on the kind of system and campaign one is running but it's a fairly common thing in comics. Characters with inherent powers get a points break for things like being vulnerable to green rocks or needing to be immersed in water every other day to retain their powers. That's the flip side of the gadget guys.

He then mentions Golden Heroes which I admittedly have very little experience with. He doesn't like the random rolling for powers much and mentions "power imbalance" within a group"  - isn't that exactly what points systems do extremely well? - and "it didn’t give you much scope for crafting a coherent group around a specific sub-genre of superhero themes" - a group theme? Like the JLA? What's their group theme? The X-Men? The Avengers? I think the theme there is who is popular right now or who do the writers like and want to include. Is "we're all mutants" enough of a theme to call a group coherent?

Finally (for the early years part of the review) we get to Champions 4th edition and he seems to have liked it then but he says he wouldn't go back to playing something like it now because character generation is too nitpicky, there are too many acronyms, and combat is slow (the one truly legit complaint in my eyes) but then he goes here:

"It does tend to encourage players with munchkin tendencies to spend ages optimising their characters for specific offensive or defensive abilities at the expense of playability.  Also it can make it really hard to balance a party of players unless you lay out specific parameters in advance to discourage anyone from being too highly skewed in any one particular direction."

Any superhero game can result in players going nuts without GM advice and intervention. The 4E Champions book has a section with multiple examples of ridiculously overpowered characters that could break a game with specific advice to not let people do that. And if party balance is a big concern any point-based game will do a better job of it than a random roll creation type game - that's what the points are for! Plus this was written in 2020 - are we still concerned with "munchkin" players in 2020? Who are you playing this with? 

Of the early games there's no mention of various editions of these or any mention of Villains & Vigilantes and it's player-based character stats plus random generation so I'm assuming he never played that one.

For later games he discusses Aberrant, M&M, and Savage Worlds via Necessary Evil:

• Aberrant seems to have been one of his more-liked options though he seems put off by player character potentially being really strong or really charismatic - I mean, this one is not my favorite but it is a superhero game so ...
• Mutants & Masterminds he describes as less crunchy than Champions but with less flavor and then describes the setting as very generic and bland. He used a picture of the 1st edition M&M cover so maybe that's what he played and I wouldn't completely disagree there but that was over 20 years ago and the game grew tremendously, as did the setting.
• Necessary Evil he praises for the concept, calls it very setting-specific, then mentions that he didn't actually play the campaign as-is because he wanted to build up to it and then ends with this:
  "We played 11 sessions in the end which actually makes it one of my longest RPG gaming runs..."
  
  Ah - that explains a lot, actually. About all of this. 

Some of these things are takes I've seen before:

• Marvel is simple and for kids
• DC is more complex, which is a benefit until it gets too complex apparently
• Champions (and point systems in general) are too hard, prone to abuse, and make it difficult to actually run a campaign
•  Aberrant is mostly liked for its concept and metaplot more than for it's mechanics or ability to emulate comic books
• M&M ... not sure what to say about this take. I see it get lumped in with Champions as "point systems bad" most of the time and I've never seen the setting described as bland but OK.
• NE - Most people who become aware of it fall in love with the concept instantly because 20 years on it's still damn near unique. People who have tried to play or run it tend to have more mixed opinions, for several reasons in my experience:
• Like this blogger, the GM tries to complicate things by creating an extensive prequel pre-campaign - just run it! It's great! You don't need to play out what the villains did before, the day the heroes died, how they got to the city - at most include a single session of buildup, maybe as part of a session zero, and then get into the campaign! 
• GM's also sometimes complicate it by moving it to a different city or setting (guilty here at least once). This creates a bunch of extra work, potentially, and how much does it really add to the campaign if it's happening in Freedom City, or Millenium City, or Paragon City really? Again, just go with the setting! The fun is in playing the game, not making everyone wait to get into the core of the thing.
• It's also a rough introduction to the Savage Worlds system. SW is different enough from most other RPGs - especially today when 5E is the big game - that it takes some adjustment for most players. I think the concept pulls a lot of people in - because it's awesome - and then you get damn near Maximum Savage Worlds with aliens, robots, and superpowers as part of that whole new system to learn. It makes that learning curve steep.

This mostly seems to be a case of looking for flaws rather than seeing the awesome with superhero RPGS. The idea than random roll character generation leads to an imbalanced party and make some feel less connected to their PC than if they had hand crafted it but then turning around and describing point-based character generation as prone to munchkin behavior and being too nitpicky ... well, what do you want? Those are two almost opposite approaches with a lot of positives on each side so if you can't get excited about either one I'm not sure what to tell you.

Fortunately now we have a third approach with the more narrative games like Marvel Heroic and Sentinels of the Multiverse (whatever the official state of the game may be the books are still out there), and ICONS and the various PBTA and FATE-based games. He seems to have completely missed MHR and SotM but he does mention the latter two. 

• FATE gets dismissed as requiring a lot of homework and having books built around specific settings. Alright that's a new take on FATE but OK. I'm pretty sure you just need FATE core or FATE light + a super book of your choice and you're good to go and if you're running FATE yo ucan really use any book as a setting - you don't really need a ton of specific mechanics. 
• PBTA he mostly describes Masks and while he likes the system he's not thrilled with the setting - yeah, I don't play supers games to focus in on teen drama either. Not my thing but it's not like they don't tell you that up front.

To wrap this up I feel like I see some of these opinions quite a bit when it comes to superhero roleplaying games and while some of them are just personal taste some of them are just opinions molded by years of internet-fueled standard takes on them: Champions is hard, Marvel was just a kids game, etc. I also think some people when looking back at things have their opinions bent by today's common knowledge as if it was yesteryear's common knowledge. We liked Marvel. We liked DCH. We loved Champions. We liked V&V. Sure, they're all different but they all have some really cool elements that stand out and they established a lot of the "standards" that are just kind of built-in today. Maybe no single ruleset was perfect but that's the beauty of RPG's - change it! Stick with a game and tweak it to fit your group!

I feel like a lot of RPG opinion these days is fueled by very thin experience levels. When I see criticism of a game  - new or old - I always want to know:

• Have you read it? All of it, not skimmed it?
• Have you made some characters for it?
• Have you run a test fight?
• Have you played it?
• Have you run it? 
• And for either of those - for how long?

This stuff matters. From forums to blogs to YouTube there are so many new games coming out that discussion tends to max out at "I read the book" and you have to dig to find people really getting into a game and not just theory-crafting stuff from a first impression. The Necessary Evil comment about 11 sessions being one of the writers longest RPG runs just has me shaking my head as yes that's enough to get a feel for things but how much did you play or run all of those other games? Yes, I ran an original Rifts campaign for over a year and I can tell you the system is a huge pain and if you are looking for balance it is absolutely not the game for you but it is completely playable. Not easy all the time but you can run it. Having run some sessions of Savage Worlds Rifts I can tell you it's a much better game for me and something I am far more likely to run now than OG Rifts. That's the benefit of experience.

I'm seeing it a lot now with M&M 4 and I expect it will continue. The playtest book just came out and people are already making declarations about the game because I suppose we live in a hot-take world now. I expect there will be a lot of  "playtest" feedback without a lot of actual playtesting but that's a risk you run with a public playtest. When we get to running it here I will post about it because I think it helps to get some actual play time experiences out there. That's one reason I talk about our Tales of the Valiant game here - approaching 40 sessions now we know a lot more about it than we did before.

That's more than enough for now - more to come on M&M4, Spectaculars, and Hero in the current day.

Supers on the Brain

 

All the M&M 4E talk sent me down a rabbit hole last week. Besides starting a re-read of the 3E rulebook and looking back through all of my other M&M books I started feeling the urge to check in on Champions, started poking around online and I ended up picking up the Hero Designer software and the Old School Enemies book that just came out which collects all of the entries from original Champions and Enemies I, II, & III and stats them up for 6th edition. This is just the kind of thing that lights the fires for sketching out a new campaign. I'm feeling pretty fired up about it right now. My players mostly haven't touched Champions since 4th edition so now I get to figure out whether it's smarter to go with 5E which is very close to 4th, or just go with the latest and greatest and use 6th.

For a short version of where Hero System/Champions stands there are roughly 4 generations ...

• Champions 1st-2nd-3rd pretty much were just building on the same framework and tweaking one design. This was before the concept of "Hero" as a system, not a set of similar but different games, had arisen. It's more loose, there are some holes and weird rules interactions here and there but it is totally playable as many of us ran many games back then.
• Champions 4th came out in 89 and was the big blue unifying rulebook that took many of us through the 90's. I suspect that popularity-wise this was the high water mark for the game as I knew multiple groups playing it then and there was a ton of support for it. One version even came with a character generator on a floppy to expedite character creation. I would run this today if someone wanted to. This is also where the game became part of the "Hero System" and the rules got unified. Some people did not like the changes here and stuck with the older editions and whatever house rules they had created - the first schism.
• Champions 5th and 5th Edition Revised (2002 & 2007) was a big black book that was very similar to 4th but with a lot of things more defined and more definitive language in general. It was less "fun" in some ways as a read and while it's a tighter ruleset it comes at a cost that was too much for some and this is a second break point among fans. This version was very well supported though - lots of cool and interesting books. The revised rulebook mainly added in examples - lots of examples.
• Champions 6th edition (2010) finally grew too large to be contained and was split into two books. I'd say this one has the biggest breaks from the past as it drops all figured characteristics - a signature feature of Champions in my opinion - the comeliness stat, certain powers - at least as separate powers, and just rearranges a lot of classic Champions features. Now I don't hate it but if you had been playing for 20+ years when this one came out it brought a lot of changes that not everyone was asking for - the third break among fans. 

So nowadays if anyone talks about a Hero or Champions game one of the first questions has to be "which edition?" and then the real conversation starts. Hero Designer thoughtfully includes both 5E and 6E so there is support for the two latest versions. If it did 4th I'd probably jump back there out of sheer nostalgia. Since I don't have a working floppy drive any more it's probably smarter to go with 5th or 6th so I can use the current application.

That leaves coming up with the actual campaign outline, regardless of mechanics. I think a short campaign is better to start but Champions takes enough initial investment that a one-shot would be kind of pointless so I'm thinking something with 3-6 sessions of "go" in it. Start small and expand as we go. I have a vision of a campaign with short bursts in the 40's, 60's, & 80's timejumping forward to each in turn to set up some history for the current day where the longer campaign would sit. It's probably too ambitious but I'm noodling on it for now. If I'm finally going to commit to a long term superhero game, why not make it something ambitious?

Even came with documentation right there in the book

This is also ignoring the imminent arrival of the M&M 4E playtest rules this weekend which will probably fire up this cycle all over again.

I just need more time! 

More to come. 

Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition Announced

 

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.

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! 

One Question Answered on the Marvel RPG Status

 

Apparently Marvel has announced - or at least is taking orders for - a new sourcebook on the Avengers. Good! That should cover a lot of ground and combined with the X-Men book that's already out and the Spider-Man book coming soon that really just leaves the FF as the last of the big four classic groupings not covered. 

Status of the Marvel Multiverse RPG?

 

There are a lot of great superhero RPGs out there right now:

• Mutants and Masterminds is still chugging along. There aren't a ton of new things out there but they've been doing adventures lately which is about the only thing the game hasn't thoroughly covered.
• ICONS is another mature RPG that is still cranking out new material.
• Champions is not one I hear much about anymore but it is still producing things like .. .character creation cards? I'm not sure I get that but I'll have to take a closer look.
• The Sentinel Comics RPG is one of the newer entries in this category and the latest thing there is the new version of the starter set which is probably a good thing but I wish they were doing more! I'll have to cover it in another post but this is a very promising game that just needs a little more attention.
• Absolute Power is the new version of Silver Age Sentinels. It's been out for a year or two now and has decent support so if you think a BESM approach to supers is interesting it's worth a look. This one is probably worthy of a separate post as well.

All of the above games are currently in-print and have pretty solid support beyond the basic rules but there was one potentially giant new entry in the field in the last couple of years that many of us were interested in - the Marvel Multiverse RPG, published by, well, Marvel itself. My own account of a tryout game is here and I thought it was worth considering as a real option. 

For Marvel we saw the main rulebook come out in 2023 along with a starter adventure and  since then we've seen an "Adventure" - Cataclysm of Kang and an "Expansion" about the X-Men. That's decent enough and there is one other announced book coming which is the Spider-Verse Expansion. There was also a set of Marvel Dice and a short Deadpool adventure that came out around the time of the movie last year.

Recently though I saw new copies of the core rulebook show up at a local Half-Price Books. Not one copy, but multiples. Now Half-Price is a pretty regular stop for my wife and I - there are quite a few of them around DFW - and we hit them whenever we are out and about. Over the past few weeks I've seen multiple new copies in multiple stores in the area. That's not a great sign for a new game as that means they are remaindered or whatever the official industry term is and sold off as a bulk lot. It happens from time to time but being fairly aware of what shows up on the RPG shelf in local used bookstores sometimes things jump out like this. So I am concerned about how the game is doing - I decided to check around online.

The MMRPG D616 Facebook group used to consistently show up in my FB feed as a group with "10+ posts a day" as recently as last year. Now it's down to "5 posts a day". Well ... 

The MMRPG Reddit group has slowed from maybe around 5 posts per day to roughly 3 per day. Not as dramatic as FB but it does seem less active. 

There is also a starter set that was supposed to be coming out from Gamefound that has been delayed from September-November to "early next year" which is ... now. It funded in February 2024. It's causing some friction. Beyond that there were some other accessories mentioned like GM screens and maps and power cards and more dice  - all of them seemingly tied to some of the supplement books. None of them have appeared or seem to have release dates. None of that is good. 

I wonder if some of the accessories are being held up or "reassessed" due to sales numbers maybe not being what they were expecting. The lack of announced books beyond the Spider-Verse book also does not feel great. I know a lot of this is anecdotal and I'm not trying to jump too far to conclusions - it's been a fairly slow-grow game line but it does seem to have gotten really slow here of late. I've been watching these things for a long time and what I'm seeing here is not positive. 

Let me say that I hope I am wrong about the direction things look to be heading. A thriving Marvel RPG could be a great way to both bring in new players and pull existing players away from D&D as their only game. I hope that we are just in a slow period where a company new to RPGs (Marvel) is working with a new partner on accessories (CMON) and things are just taking extra time. If that is the case I'd love to see a new Avengers book or Fantastic Four book announced - there is a FF movie coming out after all - for later this year. I'll be crossing my fingers as I watch for the next update on this game.

Meme-ish Monday Returns - Super Bowl Edition

 

Green Ronin's Valiant Adventures RPG Kickstarter - Uses M&M

 

So this is similar to what GR did with DC Adventures years ago - a specific-universe game using M&M rules. That seems like a good idea for me and might bring some additional attention to M&M. Here's a link to the Kickstarter.

Looks like they are doing it as 2 books (rulebook + setting book) plus a GM kit at this point which I would say is perfectly legit as an approach. Steve Kenson is the designer so I am confident it will be decent and live up to the "fully compatible with M&M 3E"  statement. They have made their goal now so it's happening for sure. 

I will say I'm not a huge Valiant fan - I've tried to get into some of their books before and it never really took but as an M&M supplement in effect I am interested. It mentions they have access to Valiant's art files so it should like like it's supposed to look as well. 

There is a free quickstart PDF out on GR's Site and DTRPG too - I will review and post something here soon. 

Thoughts on Ascendant

 

Ascendant launched in January of 2022 and apparently did pretty well as they just recently did a Kickstarter for a new Platinum edition which is a pretty quick turnaround for a new edition of a game. I saw the KS and realized I hadn't looked at the existing version so I thought I ought to and now I finally have. 

It's a softcover book that is 496 pages long - it's a hefty tome though Hero 5th Revised is about 590, and Pathfinder 2E Core was over 630, so it's not the absolute biggest - but it's hefty. It's mostly black and white text but it does have some illustrations here and there and it does use color - title bars are done in blue while examples and specific headers are done in red so there is some thought put into the layout. There are section tabs on the edges of the pages so I do like the effort that went into organizing these rules.

The mechanics roughly described are sort of what could happen if you took the Hero system and mixed it with DC Heroes with a dash of Marvel Super Heroes. yes, it's a bit of an 80's greatest hits kind of thing. In their own words:

INSPIRATION FOR THE SYSTEM

If we have succeeded, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Two particular giants deserve special acclaim: Jeff Grubb, the designer of TSR’s 1984 RPG Marvel Super Heroes; and Greg Gorden, designer of Mayfair Game’s 1985 RPG DC Heroes. Grubb’s Marvel Super Heroes RPG (sometimes called the FASERIP system) was our inspiration for the color-coded Challenge Action Resolution Table, which enables any and all actions within the game to be resolved with a roll of 1d100. Meanwhile, Gorden’s DC Heroes RPG (sometimes called the MEGS system) was our inspiration for the logarithmic mathematics that power our physics- based design. We have sought to synthesize what was best about these two games into one cohesive system that surpasses both in robustness, comprehensiveness, and verisimilitude. Whether we have, in fact, succeeded is for you to judge.

The hero similarities are my own take on it. Characters have six Primary Attributes - Might, Agility, Valor, etc. - and then they also have ten Secondary Attributes which cover everything from height and Weight to Run Speed to Income, Reputation, Passive Spotting Range, and Passive Listening Range. Then you also have two Variable Attributes - Health (physical damage capacity)  and Determination (mental damage capacity). 

That's before we get into Skills and Powers. In my eyes it's starting to look like a Hero character sheet already.

Now the DC piece comes in with "Supermetric Points" or SPs. Everything is measured in SPs - distance, speed, time, weight, density, volume, area, money, information, and fame. There is a baseline quantity of each of these that is SP 0 and then each additional point doubles the previous quantity. So a distance of SP0 is 5 feet while SP5 distance is 160 feet. There is a whole section of charts that list values/examples for all of those categories from 0-25 SPs plus notes on how to manipulate them - you can't just add them together for example. Now a lot of games since DC Heroes have used ratings like this (Mutants and Masterminds and ICONS among others) but they are hardwired in to this system even more explicitly - everything a character has or does is rated on this scale - a Might of 6 means you can pick up 1600 lbs or a Horse, for example. The normal human max is 5 by the way.

There are a ton of up-front definitions of other things too like Objects, the different type of Actions one can take, and how to resolve tasks with Challenge Checks. It's not that any one of these things is particularly complex it's that there are so many of these things right at the beginning of the rules. I go back and forth with RPGs on what should be covered first - task resolution or character creation? But there is nothing in this section that really gets me excited about playing or running this game. That said, here on page 53 we do get to see how the system works:

CHALLENGE ACTION RESOLUTION TABLE (CHART)

Once the AV and DV have been determined, the DV is subtracted from the AV to yield the Resolution Value (RV). Next, consult the Challenge Action Resolution Table (CHART). The CHART is divided into seven columns and thirteen rows (-6 to 6). Find the row matching the character’s RV in one of the two RV Columns on the left-hand side of the table. If the character is making an Attack or certain other interactive actions, it is making an Attack Check and uses the RV column labeled RV (Attack). If the character is attempting any other type of Challenge, it uses the RV column labeled RV (Other). The player or GM controlling the character then rolls 1d100 and finds the column matching the number they rolled. The color of that column is the Color Result of the Challenge Check.

That's a lot to chew on but the chart does make it easier to grasp:

For example punching someone is Valor vs. Valor. So you compare that rating,  find the difference, roll percentiles, and look at your result above. White is a fail, Green is typically a success, and the other colors indicate better and better results with some outcomes requiring a specific color minimum - that's the MSH influence. 

There are Hero Points that let you break the normal rules - every superhero game should have them  and this one does. 

Character creation uses a point build system and there are Power Limits that cap how much can be spent on any given power though there are several pages spent breaking down different kinds of limits here and both the GM and the players are going to have to look this part over fairly carefully. 

There is a lengthy powers section that looks like it covers what most people will need. 

There is an entire chapter devoted to "Objects" which covers gadgets, devices, inventions ... vehicles in this system are "crewed objects" which cracks me up for some reason. This also gets us winning section headers as "sub-object launch capability" which seems like it could get pretty deep if you model an aircraft carrier that launches attack jets which can launch missiles which might have have sub-munitions of their own in each missile. No I'm not going to try and build that right now. 

After this we get into the gear section - excuse me, the "object catalog" which covers everything from a tactical flashlight to guns to drugs to nuclear weapons. There is a pretty thorough selection of vehicles here including the aircraft carrier and jets mentioned above - missiles are in the previous part. There is also this gem of a section:

I mean .. that covers a lot, right? This is really the "things the Brick wants to throw at someone" section and I love that this is here.

There is a chapter devoted to "Movement & Travelling". It's 13 pages long and full of formulas and charts and ... this is just how this game is going to go alright? It does say "physics simulator" up front and it is not kidding.

There is a "Forensic Site Complexity" table. I am not kidding. This covers a range of sizes from "Toilet Stall" 0 SPs to "St. Thomas Island" at 25 SPs.

The game does have rules for everything from social interactions and acquiring fans to managing money to learning and memorizing information to interrogating/interviewing witnesses ... some of that I can appreciate but I have to say a lot of it just seems like needless over-quantification, especially in a superhero game. The Saving the Day section has some very cool and certainly thematic ideas - asteroid strikes, avalanches, etc. but then we get to "Disease Outbreak" which spends 7 pages breaking down all the steps of identifying, containing, and treating various diseases. I have to say in 40 years of playing and running RPGs, including superhero RPG's, I have never need this level of detail for handling a disease outbreak. Maybe someone has ... but not me. Not even in Twilight 2000 where disease is probably at its most dangerous as there is no magic, no superpowers, and not much medicine left. So this to me seems like something one would put in a specific adventure or campaign supplement that dealt with a disease outbreak as a major challenge - not part of a core rulebook for playing costumed heroes. 

The Gamemastering section wraps up the book and has my personal required elements of lots of normal NPC types, animals,  heroes, villains, and some guidance on how to organize a campaign. 

So what does it all boil down to? Well, I would have been a lot more interested in this kind of system 20-odd years ago. It is very thorough - if that's what you are looking for it's probably the most thorough superhero RPG I have encountered. They did mention "comprehensive" in that inspiration section up above and they were not kidding. But ... for me ... I just don't need multiple pages and tables for every problem a team might encounter. I like the way the main Chart system works but the overhead to get there with the SPs and the RVs and all of the details just kills it for me. In the universe of Supers RPGs I don't know where it would win out enough for me to earn some table-time. There are some things that feel like odd disconnects to me:

• It cites TSR Marvel as an influence but other than the color-coded results on the table I don't see it. MSH was very playable and did not get bogged down in details yet here the whole game is built on details. It doesn't feel FASERIP-y at all. Ease and speed of play does not seem to have been a primary concern here.
• It cites being a Physics-based game as opposed to Effects-based (Hero) or Descriptor-based (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) but comic book physics are notoriously flexible and variable and it just seems like an odd thing to base a comic-book game on. Superpowers are not usually defined with meticulous precision in comic books or shows or movies yet that's what this game is built around. It doesn't really feel right to me. 
• The general feeling of "overkill" in so many areas. The disease section is a good example. In a campaign I was running most of this would be happening offscreen while the heroes gathered samples, carried people to safety, maybe dealt with some quarantine issues, and then helped deliver the cure. It would be about how the player characters reacted to the situation, not a procedural exercise in how the world works through it all. It's just a difference in approach and what I feel is important to a game versus what the designers here saw as important. 
• Also (and Hero has a touch of this as well) there is a lot of jargon in this system and I worry that players are going to be spouting numbers and ratings and formulas in play more than just doing superhero stuff. Thirteen pages on movement alone ... I just feel like you're going to hear "He's 8 SPs tall" a lot more than "He's the size of a skyscraper!"  - the constant need to translate feels like it could interfere with the flow. Maybe with time this would fade but looking at it as a new system it's a concern. 

So it's not a game I am likely to run anytime soon. Saying that I would still consider playing it if one of my crew had a burning desire to run it. It would be an interesting experience and might change some of my feelings about it but I do not think that's likely to happen. For now, it goes on the shelf and sticks in the back of my  mind as something to re-examine down the road. 

Marvel Multiverse - The Intro Adventure PDF is Out

 

Quick note - Marvel finally put their intro adventure up in PDF form for free on DTRPG. It starts out as a straightforward hostage situation:

When the heroes arrive on the scene, the police officer in charge informs them that the situation is even worse than what they were told. The Hydra agents are demanding that the city of New York drape the Statue of Liberty in a Hydra uniform, and they’re threatening to kill a researcher every hour on the hour until that happens. There are five minutes left until the first hour is up.

I mean ... that's pretty Silver/Bronze Age appropriate I would say. As you might suspect there is more going on here than Hydra grandstanding. There is a solid map which is nice if you're going to have action scenes in a modern office building. Also there are stats for Hydra Agents (which are already in the main book), Officers, and Armored Agents (like that one up top) so it beefs up the non-super foes list a bit and it's nice to have them all right here in the adventure instead of being referred to page X. It's a nice introduction and it's exactly the kind of thing that could have been included in the main rulebook in my opinion. A free PDF is not a bad option though - thanks for that Marvel. 

That's the latest and greatest for the Marvel game as far as I know. Kang is coming in November so we will get a better look at what the big books for this game will look like then.

Firing up ICONS again

 

So I was going to be short some players this week for a variety of reasons - thus thwarting myself once again from wrapping up the Perdition Elections arc in my Deadlands campaign as I want everyone present for the finale. The bonus complication here was that the mix of players this week did not match the mix of players I have had for Warhammer, Sentinels, Marvel, or either of the Star Wars games I've run in the past year - inset appropriate emoji here. With the chance to continue an existing game game out the window I dropped back into the Hall of Gaming, took a look around, and contemplated my gaming life thus far. 

I needed something that was easy to drop players in and out of, that could be run as an episodic campaign - self contained from game to game, and something that would not take a great deal of time to prepare as this gear-switching tends to come with only a few days notice. I do not want to keep crash-course-re-learning games for one-shot runs like I've been doing so I want to pick something as the "Plan B" game and stick with it. 

Superhero games are the easiest type of RPG to manage variable player attendance issues in my experience so that's where I started. Simpler rules ... simpler character generation ... lots of support ... this was really going in one direction from pretty early on. 

So ICONS it was! I haven't run ICONS in 5 years but I ran a bunch of it from 2011 up to about 2018 and wrote about it a lot here so it's not unfamiliar territory. I mostly ran it with my kids though so my regular players have not spent much time with it. The other bonus with ICONS is that I have a bunch of short adventures for it - and I like them, which is a rarity with superhero games as most of them are not good. For some reason though this game brought out good things in people and resulted in some really fun scenarios with classic comic book themes front and center. Fainting Goat Games in particular has had a nice run.

So I spent two days re-reading the rulebook and choosing an adventure, then we got together and rolled up some characters. I ended up with only two players but that's fine for a supers game. 

• Variable Dave ended up with "Phantom Justice", an interesting mix of Phasing, Density Control, Fast Attack, and ... Spinning ... of all things. He made it work.
• Shootist Will put together "The Amazing Sub-Zero" - an Ice Controller that ended up pretty cohesive.

For this run I chose "Primal Power" from Fainting Goat. I don't want to spoil much so I'll stay general but it's a great situation involving gorillas, a zoo, mind control, a secret lab, and some other heroes, a police force, and an agency to interact with during a crisis. There are character stats and some maps to give the GM an idea of where things are happening and of course it could lead into more. 

My players being veteran superhero fans didn't even blink at a hostage situation involving armed gorillas and dealt with the initial situation quickly and efficiently. One reason for this involves one character having a high degree of proficiency with the Reflection power and the large number of tranquilizer rifles in play. Lots of mechanical interaction there but it does make people drop quite quickly when they can  be knocked out on their own turn!

I freely admit I came out of it happy that they had fun but feeling like I had a lot of homework before the next session based on the number of questions I wrote down. Combine a few new powers with not having played in a while and uh, yeah, I felt like I was behind on and off all night - it still went well though.

This weekend will probably be another session as I already know we will be missing a few players. More on that next week!