Mutants & Masterminds: RPG - 1st Edition

I've tried Marvel's FASERIP system, Palladium, Champions, GURPS, d20 as D & D, Modern, Star Wars, Cthulu, and M & M remains my favourite system to deal with superpowers.Why?Flexibility, and simplicity. Make the power you want. The book gives you a bunch of common powers, and you can easily add and subtract to get what you want. Want to personalize your energy blast? Is it pure force? Fire? A handful of ball-bearings? Whatever you want.Want to use your powers in an unusual or clever way? You don't have to buy a whole new power. Hero Points and Extra Effort are simple game mechanics that allow you to play smart, or give 110% in those critical moments! No hit points. Damage, from being hit by a granny with an umbrella, to getting a battleship dropped on your head, is the same system, using the same number of dice, just one. Combat don't take longer at higher levels. The collateral damage just increases ;). Visuals. The book is beautiful with great art throughout. It give an excellent comic book feeling.Options. The base rules make it pretty hard to kill someone accidentally. Don't agree with that? The plethora of sidebar options give you choices in lethality, power restrictions, even put hit points back in, if you want.Support. The supplemants aren't necessary, but they are all good. The Annual gives a wealth of campaign and rule options. Freedom City is an excellent city sourcebook with heroes, villains, and important and interesting people and places. Crooks! contains a wealth of insane, diabolical, greedy, or just plain miscevous opponents for your players. And the forums are a great place to ask questions, put out ideas, and generally get a bunch of friendly useful feedback. We want to help you!One important warning to players and GM's: CONCEPT. Don't try to squeeze the most damage and defense out of every last point. That leads to less fun. Make heroes. Don't make wacking machines.My gaming circle, some nine people, started with one copy of this book. Within two years, over half had their own copy, and I own two! We've had three M & M campaigns since the book came out, and they've never fizzled. They ended, and people had a good time along the way.M & M. Less math. More fun.

Like most RPGers, probably, I got started in this wonderful, odd little hobby with D & D. I played it through junior-high and high school, but eventually, after playing lots of other games with simpler, more streamlined rule systems that made it easier to "role-play" instead of "roll-play," I left D & D behind. For nearly 20 years I played other games, but when I heard the hype about d20, my interest was piqued. Since the books were so cheap, I gave them a try, and they looked very good at first, but when I joined a group to play, I found that things were as bogged-down in myriad minute rules as ever. Things would be fine until we had to fight something, then everything came to a screeching halt as we spent the next half hour simulating thirty seconds of combat with dozens of dice rolls. And these days, I just don't have the time or patience to study a set of game books as if they were a textbook.Recently, I was looking for a rule system to use in a fantasy campaign, but with a very different flavor--imagine my surprise when the one I chose turned out to be d20! In Mutants & Masterminds, all the non-essentials have been tossed out, and the game is much improved by it. And while it is a supers game, with a little tinkering, superpowers can easily become magic."A 1-year-old child" gave the game 1 star--interestingly, all the things he complained about were things I liked. In addition, he had little reason to complain, as for every rule he complained about, there was a box nearby with an alternate rule for people who didn't like M & M's new rule. For example, I'm going to use good old-fashioned hit points for now. Though perfect for a superhero game, the M & M damage system is too comic-book-style for my campaign.All in all, it's the first d20 game that is as good as some of the better games out there.

Green Ronin Publishing has done something remarkable with this game. The book just looks fantastic, and Mutants & Masterminds manages to use the d20 rules to create a genuine comic book feel. The lack of classes and hit points may seem strange at first, but it opens the game to almost limitless superhero combinations. And if you don't like the rules that are provided, the book is literally filled with tips and optional rules to tailor the game to the gamemaster's specific tastes. Think attacking should be a skill? A power? It can be done, and M & M tells you how. It's hard to find a Superhero RPG that is flexible yet streamlined. Mutants & Masterminds really pulls it off. A single d20 is the only die you need to play the game from start to finish. The writing is often very clever and appropriate to the genre. It was especially refreshing (I myself being an experienced gamemaster) to see them deliver constant reminders that the key to the game is enjoying yourself. The rules are simplistic and versatile enough to let the players' imaginations run wild while allowing the gamemaster to deliver some good, old-fashioned, four-color fun.

As a professional adventure game designer and reviewer, and a long-time fan of superhero roleplaying, I've been waiting for a game to come along which featured full implementation of the concepts in the d20 System engine while still engaging superhero play in a fair and balanced way. Steve Kenson has done a marvelous job of that in Mutants & Masterminds, bringing the best of the Open Source rules, losing the worst, and adding new rules that are at once rational, playable, simple and fun. The book design by Super Unicorn is easy on the eye and enhanced by art provided by a dozen current comic book professionals. The book feels small and intimate for all of its 288 pages, and the value received is exceptional, certainly better than those heavyweight core books from Wizards of the Coast. If you love superhero gaming, or if you love D & D but are thinking of a change and yet don't want to learn a whole new game... BUY THIS BOOK.

Forget Hero, forget GURPS Supers, heck, forget Silver Age Sentinels: Mutants and Masterminds is THE superhero RPG to get. Not only does it use the innovative d20 system, but since it doesn't have the d20 logo on it (which would place further restrictions on what they can or can't publish), it's d20 done right! All of the familiar game mechanics are there, along with excellent character creation, letting you create any hero or superhero you can possibly think of! But don't take it from me; get the book and find out for yourself why it's the best d20-based superhero RPG out there.