How To Use This Blog

How To Use This Blog

Welcome traveler!

Perhaps you have found yourself in this peculiar patch of the global gaming village by random happenstance or you have succumbed to my relentless spamming of Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. No matter. You have stumbled into the labyrinthine corridors of a deeply nerdy mind. This blog exists to provide an outlet for the creative impulses of the author and to express a fierce love for gaming and the stupidly varied cultural interests of said madman. You are most likely to find a number of conversions for characters from various media for with the third edition of the Mutants & Masterminds roleplaying game. Although designed to emulate the super heroics found in a comic book series, M&M provides such an incredible wealth of options it can be used for nearly any setting with little or no modification.

For those unfamiliar with Mutants & Masterminds, your critical failure of gaming knowledge will be largely ignored and will not be punished; you have already suffered through a life lacking the thrill of your wildest roleplaying dreams coming to life amid the thunderous noise of crashing icosahedra. If you don’t own a copy of Mutants & Masterminds you can purchase one here: http://mutantsandmasterminds.com/. Those who don’t purchase the PDF can use the Hero SRD whilst waiting for your copy to be delivered, as can the cheapskates amongst you: http://www.d20herosrd.com/.

Now that the shaming is complete, let’s move on.

Getting Started

Here’s what you need to start playing Mutants & Masterminds:

·       Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Hero's Handbook and/or regular visits to d20 Hero SRD

·       A character sheet for each player

·       Pencils and scrap paper

·       Dice (only a d20 is required for each player in Mutants & Masterminds, however I intend to provide optional rules for using ancillary polyhedra)

Take some time to familiarize yourself with the rules. You don’t need to know everything right away (or ever), but you’ll need to understand the basics, how hero points/victory points work, how to make characters, and what your abilities do. If you intend to be the gamemaster, you will need a more thorough understanding of the rules and a setting. I would definitely recommend using an established setting with a handful of predesigned adventures if you have never been a gamemaster before.

In fact, including a few published adventures (or converting some to your setting) and working them into your campaign is usually a good plan for most groups. Even the most creative gamers lose some mental agility or find themselves stuck with no good idea of where to go next, not to mention the fact that players make a habit or circumventing EVERYTHING you prepare yourself. Having prepared adventures on hand can help you get back on track; all you need to worry about is orienting the players to the scenario you pick out. For more on how to handle naughty players and on training yourself to follow their lead, check out Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering: http://www.sjgames.com/robinslaws/. It’s a bit old now, but most of the advice is as handy as extra dice and as ageless as the oral storytelling tradition itself.

What’s Different?

In theory not much, but all games become unique localized multiuser psychotic waking dreams as some point. On this blog, this shared lunacy will be encouraged. To wit, one thing that is a little unique is the way powers are presented here.

*By the way, links are important on this blog and usually they will be bolded as the word “powers” has been. If you hover over a bold item, you may find a link. A good faith effort has been mde to add links to everything relevant to the subject, but the author has a dreadful ADHD-PI problem, and thus fails many an Awareness check. Furthermore, your guide, flawed, eccentric, child-like, et al enjoys blasting everything from Joy Division and The Cure, to Kesha and Robyn, to Aesma Daeva and Nightwish, to the Beastie Boys and N.W.A, to Brother Byrd and the Godfather of Soul himself! …. See what happened? Anyway, the point is look for links!*

If you’re viewing this on your mobile device or are simply too lazy to click the link (kudos my friend!) here is the basic M&M power layout as seen on Hero SRD:

BLAST

Effect: Ranged Damage • 2 points per rank

You can make a damaging ranged attack. It might be a blast of energy, a projectile (arrow, bullet, throwing blade, etc.), or some similar effect. You make a ranged attack check against the target’s Dodge defense. The attack’s damage equals your power rank and the target makes a Toughness resistance check against it.

It’s simple and therefore flawless.

Here’s the flawed version used on this blog:

Blast

◊Descriptors – Listed (example: fire, magic)

◊Effect – Ranged Damage • 2 points per rank

Power Name (example: Eldritch Flame) (ranged Damage)

◊Modifiers – increased range: +1/rank

◊Action – standard

◊Requirement – ranged attack check

◊Range – S/M/L 25/50/100 feet per rank

◊Duration – instant

◊Results – Damage

◊Resist – Toughness

Description

As you call out an invocation to Prometheus, a blast of mystical flame reaches out from your outstretched finger tips and engulfs your foe.

Make a Ranged Combat: Magic (or Fire Blast or Mystic Invocation, or whatever) check. If your check result exceeds your target’s Dodge defense, flames encircle the target who must make a Toughness resistance check with a DC equal to 15 your effect rank.

If this resistance check fails by one degree, the target has a –1 circumstance penalty to further resistance checks against damage. With two degrees of failure, the target is also dazed until the end of their next turn. With three degrees of failure, the target is staggered instead of dazed. Four or more degrees of failure will incapacitate the target (for more information of the dazed, stunned and incapacitated conditions, see Conditions).

Note: Your Eldritch Flame may have additional effects such as igniting flammable materials at the gamemaster’s option. This is just as likely to be helpful to you as it is to lead to a complication.

So, yeah it’s a bit wordy, but the italicized fluff should help give you an idea of what’s happening and can lead you and the gamemaster into deeper levels of narrative play. The results of the power are specified so that you could theoretically save/bookmark/print out the power to have on hand and keep your face out of your books or away from the loving glow of your various devices and thus on the people with whom you share your table space… if their countenance is not too hideous (Hideous Countenance sounds like a power that needs stats…)

One of the most important pieces of the revised format is the descriptor line as M&M really relies upon thoughtful use of descriptors to make one blast power different from another and to determine how powers interact; they can tell you when one power counters another or what additional flavor effects (or sometimes practical in game effects) a power might have.

End Game

The goal of this blog is to provide you with a vision of characters and powers that will be familiar to many of you and which you can use in your own games or to inspire your own creations. Maybe you have another favorite game system and Mutants & Masterminds isn’t quite your thing. Well don’t worry (weirdo), the author plans to add adventures and optional rules which can be converted or ported directly into other games. Surely you’ll find some value in lingering around from time to time. If not, well I’ve sorry but you’ve just been subjected to an irreversible life draining effect. Perhaps Swift Wind would be willing to deliver you back to the time just before you read all of this so that you can warn your past self of the danger you’ve blundered into. Hmmm… now there’s an idea for an adventure!