Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition

January 15, 2009 7 comments

One of my favorite game systems is Mutants & Masterminds. It doesn’t get nearly enough love and attention here on this page, and I’ve decided to change that. Watch for more reviews and articles over the coming weeks and months. Today, I’ll start with a look at the core rulebook.

M&M uses a hacked version of the D20 rules, based on the Open Gaming License. Only a D20 is required, and no other polyhedrals are used. It’s the same core mechanic – roll a D20, add modifiers, and beat a target number. It uses the same base skill and feats, with some modifications and additions. It’s even got levels, sort of. The differences from generic D20 are significant, however, and the reason that this is my favorite iteration of the D20 rules. To start, it’s a point-buy system; “level” is a gauge of how many points were used in the built, in order for game masters to assign appropriate challenges and adversaries. Hit points are gone, replaced with a damage system where players make a saving throw based on the attacker’s damage bonus and suffer penalties to rolls based on descriptive damage levels. There are Hero Point, which players can use to modify rolls. And of course, there are superpowers.

Because this is a superhero game is it, be default, a generic game. You can use this system for anything from fantasy to pulp to science fiction to horror to crime drama. That’s because the universes of comic book superheroes are kitchen sink settings. There’s magic, superscience, psionics, gadgets, aliens, gods, giant monsters, anything and everything you can imagine. M&M accounts for that nicely, allowing any power to come from any sort of origin. Your ray gun works like my mental blast works like his mutant energy blast works like her spell. The mechanics are the same, the special effects are different.

The heart of this book, to me, is the gamemaster’s material. Everything you really need is in one book, from advice on building any sort of world you can imagine to pre-statted villain archetypes and non-player characters. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t need supplements, because they’re nothing but gravy. The supplements are excellent, however, as you’ll see in future reviews, because they expand upon specific sub-genres and provide more pre-generated villains and plotlines to throw into your campaign.

Mutants & Masterminds hasn’t come up on my play list primarily because I don’t know what to do with it. Yes, I could use it as a generic system, but it does scream to be used for superheroes. I just haven’t found an original and exciting take on supers that I want to run. Everything has been done already. I feel like the genre’s beat. The system is great, the problem is me. That’s one of the reasons I’ve dusted the books off and decided to write about them. Maybe as I read through them an idea will hit me, like one of the fortuitous accidents that gives people superpowers rather than kills them, and I’ll find a reason to play.

Buy Mutants & Masterminds: RPG – 2nd Edition