Another nice things about M&M is that you can use it for just about any power level and any genre. You can easily create six shooters for westerns, starships for SF, and Force powers for Star Wars. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any WoD powers that can't be duplicated using M&M so it could be used for that setting as well.
It really is a good system once you get past the high learning curve.
@Runescryer said:
@Lithium
There's a couple of other supers game systems out there.DC Universe: the last game from West End before they completely folded, it's the modified D6 system adapted for supeheroes. Not really sucessfully...
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Margaret Weiss Production's recent entry. Has some interesting dice and narrative mechanics, but no chargen, as far as I remember.
Cypher System: new universal game system from Monte Cook using the system from Numeria and The Strange. Simple dice mechanics,deceptively simple char gen (in a good way).
Abberant: White Wolf's superhero game. Storyteller system and easy enough. My only real problem with it was the narrow 1-5 trait range.
In the end, I agree with you that M&M is the best overall mixture of ease of play and complexity.
Well I don't and won't use that travesty that Weis came up with for Marvel, talk about non-existant rules for making a character other than some crazy handful of dice and put what you want where... just ugh.
I don't mind WEG games, but, I also don't want to deal with fistfulls of d6 too, it can get annoying and just creates dice bloat in the end.
Aberrant is a setting I love, and the system isn't horrible, but it is not balanced. At all. I made an Aberrant MUX back in the days and while we were coding through chargen we realized just how broken it would be on a large scale (The mega-attributes in particular are incredibly abusive).
I have not tried Aberrant d20, but I figured that'd probably be using something similar to M&M being d20 to begin with and since I'm not using that setting...
@ZombieGenesis As for pulling only M&M players, I'm not entirely sure about that. If I make the chargen system intuitive and helpful enough, and give people avenues to just play a balanced character without having to finagle the system then it'll be pretty welcoming. That's the hope.
Other than the old Aberrant system (Which anyone who is familiar with WoD would be familiar with) I expect M&M to have the most proliferation when it comes to game system in this day and age.
Maybe I will get only M&M players, and if that's the case, that's ok too so long as everyone is having fun and I don't have to deal with Batman tapping Robin in the batcave.
@TNP I don't think the system requires that much of a learning curve, it's a single d20 + modifiers most anyone familiar with 3.0 D&D is going to be used to or at least familiar with. I guess creating extreme min-max characters takes practice but, I don't think balance is going to be difficult to bring in due to how PL works.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
As someone who has coded up a M&M 3E system all I can say is, good luck. The problem with coding M&M is that it's a toolbox system. You don't create a character by buying powers you create a character by building powers and abilities. This adds numerous levels of complexity and complication to the process.
An intuitive and user friendly c-gen aside the player still has to understand the dozens and dozens of abilities and traits that make up the M&M system. One of the biggest blockades is the Affliction ability. While I think it's a brilliantly simple way to handle a wide array of powers it can be very difficult to wrap your head around, even for experienced RPers.
Anyway, I'm not trying to bash the idea of an M&M MUX I just think if you want to build an M&M MUX it will be largely for M&M players. I think you are very unlikely to convert non-M&M types to the game. Though I will say that the idea of an OC theme may be just the thing to do it.
These are just my opinions of course.
I agree that Aberrant needs a lot of TLC to fix up. We'll see how 2.0 goes.
Back in the day, I was looking at ways of making the TSR Marvel RPG less random in char gen. One solution that I had was the old 'Roll and Distribute' method from D&D: roll 10 d100 results, distribute one result for each ability, number of powers, number of talents, resources. Then allow players to choose individual powers & talents. Roll and distribute the power levels. You get a character that is more customized and makes more sense than the usual MSH character.
@ZombieGenesis Most super hero games are toolboxes, or you get a list of powers that is in and of itself a whole book like the old Marvel Ultimate Powers Book (I loved that book...)
We'll see how it goes, but I do think that with templates and low PL characters available like popcorn it should be easy for people to get involved with a minimum of fuss.
That's the dream.
@Runescryer My attempt to make it less random was to try and convert it into a point buy system but trying to determine the point value for each power was... well it was a pain in the ass. I got pretty far, my coder at the time did some pretty amazing things but I didn't have enough support to see it through in the end because at the time I didn't really trust enough people to be staffers cuz it was my baby.
Thankfully that's less of an issue now in some ways, I'm more willing to give people a chance.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
I tried to turn it into a point buy system too, but gave up. It's a serious nightmare unless you assume that 1 pt= 1 pt regardless of power or attribute.
Oh, there was also a D20 version of Guardians of Orders Silver Age Sentinels. But it was a straight leveling progression using OGL, unlike what M&M 2E did.
@Runescryer Yeah I remember reading something about that, and honestly that's why I'd never looked at M&M for so long because it was OGL and I figured it had 'levels' like D&D does which turned me off to the idea of an OGL super hero game entirely.
@Lithium I think we're in disagreement about what a toolbox(or toolkit) system is but that's beyond the point.
RE: Marvel Superheroes RPG I remember a bunch of articles for non-random MSH c-gen in the old Wizard magazines. I think they might have them archived somewhere on http://classicmarvelforever.com/cms/.
MSH remains one of my all time favorite systems. The recent ICONS system comes very close to updating it for the modern era. Converting from MSH to ICONS is pretty simple and straight forward. I always felt that M&M 3E was a modern day revitalization of the old DC Heroes RPG by WEG and ICONS was the same for MSH (though ICONS is closer to MSH than M&M 3E is to DCH). Which was great for me because those were my two all time favorite superhero RPGs.
I don't know how we could be in disagreement as to what a toolbox is. A toolbox is a bunch of pieces that you can put together to create individual powers and characters that are unique. Hero System is a huge toolbox, for an example, and while M&M has toolbox elements it is nowhere near as daunting as that particular one is.
We seem to disagree on how much of a toolbox system M&M is. I think it is just as much of a toolbox system as Hero (though I agree that it is not nearly as daunting but I think this is thanks to a slicker design than to being less of a toolbox system). That's about it.
I view M&M as the ultimate toolbox system. It has a fairly minimal entry learning curve but gives you absolute control over how your character is built. You don't have to shoe horn powers in a "close enough" build, you can create exactly what you want.
@ZombieGenesis said:
You don't have to shoe horn powers in a "close enough" build, you can create exactly what you want.
Which is what makes it so good. But complicated. There are (I just counted) 51 power effects (such things as fly, damage, shapeshift, etc). Each of those powers is listed with extras and flaws that can be applied to them to enhance or limit them and affect their cost.
Then there are 38 additional extras which can be applies to the powers, some of which change the cost per rank and some of which just add a couple points to the end cost. In addition, you can apply an extra to only some ranks instead of all of them.
One of these extras is the alternate effect which lets you (basically) create a power framework, letting you be able to swap out one power for another (such as changing clips in a gun from bullets to dazzle rounds).
I explained this for the sake of those who don't know the system. There's pretty much nothing you can't do with M&M including building weapons, cars, buildings, spaceships, etc. But it is very complicated till you get the hang of it. And even then, it's complex.
@Lithium said:
Out of all the super hero game systems I've come across it's the easiest to understand
Because it's still a hell of a difficult thing to understand as a game in general. "Easier" does not mean "easy"; this is the responsibility of the game designers, who have apparently written a game for other people who understand the Superhero mindframe and also a more complex d20 Feats system. These are two conceits of the M&M2 system which limit who it's for and how easy it is to pick up.
If you think it's easy, then maybe consider the skills you have that make it easy, and find ways to teach this. You won't be convincing me that it's easy by simply saying so. @TNP gets it.
I have read exactly one superhero system that has addressed both theme and the best way to build powers Wild Talents. I felt that sigh of relief with one small side-note titled something like: "Why we don't throw people into the sun." I bet I can piss off any superhero game fan by building a reasonable, low-powered character who can, e.g., teleport someone into the deepest abyss of the sea and would. Wild Talents says, "Yeah, don't do that, because fun." It cares to introduce people into the game, not just make assumptions like M&M2 does.
I specifically listed two web comics that care about these aspects, and I'll name a third: Grrl Power. (Link to an example of the characters playing what sounds like M&M)
Maybe also Mutant City Blues, but I'm not sure Gumshoe makes a good Superhero game. It looks like a good game with super powers. It's probably the only superhero game I've read where the power system is not really a toolbox as much as a power-path. It is, however, another superhero game that thinks about it, for which I give it a lot of props.
Another Superhero system worthy of note that focuses more on how powers effect the world around them rather then how much Captain X can lift is Smallville. It is also by Margaret Weis and uses a system that is similar to her Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but does have c-gen rules and is more relationship and value driven. For example if Lois is an a building about to explode and Clark wanted to get there in time to safe her, he would roll a pool made up of his Love value, ( all the ratings in the system are between a d4 and a d12) His relationship with Lois dice, and a die based on his super speed.
Though the system is very much designed for games focused on a small number of players and would not be real good for a mush.
Alright that's fair. I can see all those points and yeah I am hacking the rules somewhat (Mainly because some of them are kind of weird and make designing a pain in the ass).
There will be some changes because it is a different medium, some powers will be removed, the way penetrating and impervious affect things is changing (It's ridiculously hard to be as tough as a tank in M&M for example, or even moderately bulletproof as a sniper rifle is going to possibly hurt even Toughess 12 Impervious characters ).
I recognize I might have a leg up because I am very familiar with super hero systems, especially ones like Hero System and others but I am going to do my best to make it approachable and easily understood by any who wish to play on the game.
Part of that is simply making access to information easier, not having to flip through books and find pages etc.
I'm working on commands to facilitate that today actually.
In my experience Impervious simulates comic based combat wonderfully with the way M&M 3E handles things.
Using the Powerhouse archetype we can look at some examples. He has Toughness 14 and 12 ranks of that are impervious. This means he is immune to anything with a damage rating of 6 or lower. This means any human level strength character and almost any weapon outside of a rocket launcher have no chance of hurting him (outside of miracle hits simulated by crits).
So let's start with the sniper rifle example. The sniper rifle is damage 5 with a threat range of 19-20. Under normal circumstances the Powerhouse is immune to the sniper rifle damage. If the attacker scores a critical hit (10% chance) then they have the potential to harm the Powerhouse with rank 10 damage.
This means the Powerhouse now has to make a damage check with his 14 Toughness vs a DC of 25. He totally ignores this damage 50% of the time by rolling an 11 or greater. He suffers 1 degree of failure 20% of the time by rolling a 7 through 10. This has little impact on him save that he's -1 on future damage saves. He suffers 2 degrees of failure 25% of the time by rolling a 2 through 6. This means he suffers -1 on future damage checks and are dazed (only standard and free actions) until the end of his next turn. He suffers 3 degrees of failure 5% of the time by rolling a 1. This means he would be staggered until he recovers.
This works as a good example of any rank 10 attack against the Powerhouse. For the sniper rifle it is going to be exceedingly rare. For another PL 10 character this might be an average attack. I think this makes him VERY tough to hurt against similarly ranked characters. He ignores the damage 50% of the time and only takes significant damage 1% of the time.
Further, he can only even be hurt by a rank 7 or higher attack. From a strength perspective this would be a superhuman who could lift roughly 3 tons. No human has a chance of hurting the Powerhouse with his bare hands. Someone with a strength of 7 (barring critical hits) is going to have their hits ignored 65% of the time. Even if the hit scores 25% of the time this will be a single degree of failure and 10% of the time it will be a second degree failure. There is no chance (outside of a critical) for any significant damage to be had by even a rank 7 attack.
If we look at the upper end and say he is struck with a strength 12 attack he is now saving against a DC 27. This means he still ignores all damage 40% of the time by rolling a 13 or higher. Those are still pretty good odds. And he still has no chance at a 4th degree failure and won't barring critical hits or having suffered at least 4 hits already. And this is against attacks that are likely pushing the limits of a PL 10 character.
I find that tinkering with impervious (making them immune to power rank attacks) completely unbalances the game. I think the default system simulates most things you'd see in the comics quite nicely. You could have battles with Captain America vs. Iron Man with Cap having a chance of winning without Iron Man feeling like he's been punked out. Or Batman vs. Superman in a similar (but even more slanted) situation.
That said, I can also see it as a valid option for simulating absolute tanks at lower levels (PL 10 or so). When you just want to say, "Nope, physical attacks just do not hurt this guy" but you don't want a PL 15 campaign going on.
... Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm out. Good luck with this game.
Yes, but the powerhouse can lift 1.6 kilotons. Yet a 30.06 rifle with an armor piercing (Penetrating) bullet can completely ruin his day. There's no immunity to small arms unless you buy an immunity to that individual thing. It's also a problem in other systems such as Hero System when you get the stun lottery. It's just messy.
One of the things that was great about TSR's game is someone like Juggernaut was hard as heck to hurt physically and that was easily simulated. Even softer bricks such as Iron Man, or Colossus, or The Thing were able to just not care about a lot of conventional weaponry.
I think impervious and penetrating should be able to be bought more than once. Buying Impervious on Toughness 12 lets you ignore attacks of rank 6 or lower. But, buy 6 points of penetrating on an attack (For half the cost of buying Impervious on 12 defense) and you have, for 6 points, completely bypassed it.
For example: The light anti-tank weapon, or the LAW rocket, is pretty ubiquitous and can be purchased fairly easily at a gunshow. It does Ranged Burst Area Damage 9, Penetrating 9. So it can negate the toughness of up to an 18 imperviousness. 18. That's world defending power level range and it's a weapon that anyone can get, even more common if you start adding in bazooka's left over from WWII and Korea and Vietnam or mass produced by various countries and sold all over the world.
One of those hits you and on a non-crit you're looking at DC 24 to resist in the best of circumstances. Set up anti-tank mines, and you got Damage 15 penetrating 8. Which would be a 30 DC that can overcome toughness 16 impervious.
It doesn't exactly simulate those types of comic characters who can laugh at modern weaponry. Those guys who take tank cannon shots (Ranged Damage 9, Penetrating 9 also) without a care, of which there are a more than a fair few of.
It's one of the things I don't like that changed from 2nd to third edition. Impervious actually felt tough.
@Lithium
I guess I'm not getting your takes on either explosives or penetrating attack. First, I can't find a single source that has any explosive with damage 9 and penetrating attack 9. The highest penetrating attack I can find is 2 for, oddly enough, a LAW. Could you please point me to your source for these stats?
Second, even using those stats, say someone with Impervious Toughness 18 is hit with the blast they're still only resisting a rank 24 attack (15 + 9 for the penetrating attack). They take no damage by rolling a 6 or higher. How does it negate their toughness? I'm not being sarcastic, I'd like to know where you're getting this rule from in case I've been doing it wrong all this time. Thanks!
Unfortunately this has to be a quick post as my gaming group is meeting online but I wanted to throw this out there.
Page 11 GM's guide, 3rd edition.
Also, penetrating point for point negates impervious. So if you had penetrating 2 on a rank 4 attack, you'd still get 2 rank attack even against impervious 30.
Ah, okay. Found the stats but I'm still not seeing how it negates impervious toughness.
Another nice things about M&M is that you can use it for just about any power level and any genre. You can easily create six shooters for westerns, starships for SF, and Force powers for Star Wars. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any WoD powers that can't be duplicated using M&M so it could be used for that setting as well.
It really is a good system once you get past the high learning curve.
