Does anyone play M+M?

[Webhead]

I too, love Mutants and Masterminds. I've always wanted to have a supers system to run. My first experiment was Blood of Heroes.....ugh......

You want to talk about complicated? That system was complicated! OV/RV, AV/EV.....my players were killing things just trying to subdue the villains! And if you didn't have powers in that system....then there was almost no point in playing (please note, this is just from my personal experience; I'm sure others that might have played this system have seen otherwise). The skills were also nightmarish, as were the way damage was calculated. Your body score...that's how much you could take before you went down (the average joe schmoe was 2's across the board)...

While I've never read Blood of Heroes and what changes (if any) it made to the MEGS rules system, I have liked my limited experience with that system as it was presented in the DC Heroes RPG. But you raise some valid points.

MEGS is not a game for running "non-powered" games. It does fine with low-level or "street-level" supers and even non-powered supers like Batman, Robin, Night Thrasher, etc, but it is not really intended for the "average joe" games.

I actually liked how MEGS uses a character's BODY score to determine health. They are essentially hit points if you think about it. You can take a number of "ranks" of damage equal to your BODY before you are knocked out. Want to be able to take a lot of damage? Take a high BODY score (and/or defensive powers). Simple.

Also, I'm not sure of the exact circumstances, but killing the villains while trying to subdue them should almost never happen unless the players or GM are inclined to make it so. Much like M&M, for "heroic" games MEGS assumes that all heroes are using "stunning" or "non-lethal" combat against their foes. Such attacks can reduce a character to 0 BODY (thus knocking them out), but will never reduce a character below 0. Heroic PCs can choose to instead declare that an attack is "killing combat" which can reduce BODY below 0 and thus potentially kill the target. For "heroic" games however, MEGS enforces the genre conventions that true heroes never use lethal force and thus any hero who chooses to use "killing combat" forfeits all Hero Point rewards for the adventure (similar to Marvel Super Heroes "Karma" system).

There were some elements of the system that were a little complex, but there were also elements that were nicely streamlined. I especially liked the way APs (Attribute Points) interacted and that everything in the game was measured in them. It made it supremely easy to figure things that were otherwise daunting such as exactly how long it would take a character to travel a certain distance or how far somebody could throw something of a certain weight.

My feelings are that, overall, M&M is probably a slightly more polished and flexible game and my game of choice for running supers campaigns. But I do find myself missing certain aspects of DC Heroes' (MEGS') uniformity and streamlining and considering running the game again.

[Guardian]

As I said, to each their own. I just really felt that the Blood of Heroes system was far too complicated for me. Not only did I read it twice, but I had two other players read it themselves. And each of us walked away with different interpretations of the entire system and its rules.

Even in the Blood of Heroes system, however, it is still possible to kill someone even if you're "pulling your punches". I will say this - if you're doing a one shot, it's a good system to use.

The old TSR Marvel system (which I also ran and played) I felt was a bit better than the Blood of Heroes system. Yes, Karma was a bit clunky, but it was a bit easier to grasp the rules I felt personally.

I'm not trying to denounce one system over the other; that's not my intention. But I have played a few of the Super Hero systems out there, and have found M&M to be the best of them all.

[Wulvaine]

I love M&M. However, I haven't gotten to play it very much, and I don't feel quite qualified to GM for a group myself yet, so it's a bit of a catch-22 at the moment.

But I love the flexibility and simplicity of the system. The first RPG I ever played was a Hero System 5E supers game that only lasted about three sessions (because my friend's dad was our GM, and he doesn't follow through; he comes up with an idea, runs a couple sessions, and then lets it die, sadly). *Cringe* It was fun, but it was kind of like being taught to swim by being shoved into the deep end.

I'd had a bit of experience in character design before that, but I hadn't ever gotten to play.

So when I picked up M&M, I was amazed at how streamlined it was in comparison.

[kurtthedm]

I would like to play an MM game, since the last campaign I was in lasted for only 2 sessions and ended on a cliffhanger.

[Webhead]

I would like to play an MM game, since the last campaign I was in lasted for only 2 sessions and ended on a cliffhanger.

Mostly due to timing and circumstances, my attempts to run an M&M campaign have tended to come up similarly short. Here's a list of my M&M campaign attempts:

1st Campaign: (1st Edition) - 6 sessions before one player's immaturity and temper brought it to a crashing halt

2nd Campaign: (2nd Edition) - 3 sessions before half the players could no longer attend and the game fizzled

3rd Campaign: (2nd Edition) - 2 sessions, run by a friend, a game set in a very "dark and gritty" type of world and the PCs were rather dysfunctional. GM moved away shortly thereafter and game never resurfaced

4th Campaign: (2nd Edition) - 2 sessions of a PbP solo campaign before schedule conflicts put it on hiatus

And sprinkled inbetween those are a few various one-shots, usually with only one or two players involved.

Yes, M&M is among my list of "most-loved yet least-played" RPGs. I would love for an opportunity to run a good solid campaign in the near future.

[kurtthedm]

I would be up for one.

[LordChicken]

Well if somone Can put up a PBP we could get a lota people up, just need more then one GM.(in case one leaves) ide play and invite my D&D friends

[Marley117]

I absolutely love M&M. MY small group and I played a home brew campaign that I came up with with a friend of mine. He and I sat up for hours, just talking about this world that mixed sci-fi and super powers.

Basically we had used up earth, and it was about to fall apart. An alien race (I can't remember what we called them) made contact with us. They were in much the same problem. With our combined technology we managed to set off and both races intermingled. The aliens were much like humans, only taller and longer lived. They exhibited odd characteristcs, psionics and such. Humanity had those same things, but we just hadn't learned to harness it.

Anyway, the two races intermingled, and settled on a group of planets. The combining of the two created a mutt breed, which had weird powers that niether race had ( enter player characters)

It didn't matter how much of a mutt you were. Just some mutts had these weird things. Anyway there was a civil war, humanity rebelled, and the two races split, leaving the mutts in between. Humanity became almost xenophobic, and exhiled or killed anyone who was 'tainted'

The players are ona moon created to help train and protect these mutant kids, called the Acadamy.

Anyway...sorry about the rambling. It was a lot of fun though. I would love to play a pbp game!

[MarshamSane]

I'd love to play as well. and thankfully this site is DOD friendly, so I can even play when my carrier is underway!

[bushido11]

It's good to see that there are some M&M players on the forums. I personally like to use it for genres other than superheroes; I've ran a couple of superhero sessions, but unfortunately, the game fell apart because people weren't showing up anymore. Around where I live, it's either D&D or nothing (for the most part; I did run into someone running GURPS 4e).

As far as any d20 derivative goes, M&M is top-notch. I'm not a fan of class/level based systems, since they pigeonhole folks into playing a certain way or make recreating the kind of character you want to play a convulted process. I remember back in 2000 as I was waiting for both M&M 1e and d20 Modern to come out. M&M 1e came out first and I thought it was a godsend amongst d20 games; when I got d20 Modern, I was rather unimpressed when comparing it to M&M. 2e did a tremendous job polishing up on itself, and I honestly don't foresee a real need for a 3rd edition anytime soon (and I don't mean in the same way Hero went from 5e to 6e; that game honestly didn't really warrant a brand new edition, even though Steve Long was itching for one due to the release of Champions Online).

For the hit point dilemma, I've run into it myself from others. Here's a little system I came up with that serves as an alternative "hit point" system.

The Damage Threshold System (or DTS): an alternate injury tracking system for Mutants & Masterminds.

With the DTS, characters have a Damage Threshold (DT) and two sets of Condition Tracks (nonlethal and lethal). DT indicates how many points of damage one can take before his condition worsens. By default, characters start with a DT of 10, and you can increase your DT by 2 for 1pp.

As for the Condition Tracks (nonlethal and lethal), each Condition Track has three levels. For nonlethal, these are:
• Bruised (from 1 damage to DT in damage)
• Battered (from DT+1 damage to 2x DT; dazed for one round)
• Staggered (from 2x DT - 1 to 3x DT; staggered).

For lethal, these are:
• Injured (from 1 damage to DT in damage)
• Wounded (from DT+1 damage to 2x DT; stunned for one round)
• Disabled (from 2x DT - 1 to 3x DT; disabled* and staggered).
*In DTS, the disabled condition works differently. Rather than not being able to take strenuous action at the risk of worsening your condition to dying, you suffer a -5 penalty to any rolls that require you to perform a strenuous action. This change was made so that you can still do stuff without having to worry about going from "disabled" to "dying" from performing strenuous actions.

Damage Overflow
Should nonlethal damage exceed the Staggered stage, the target is rendered unconscious and any further damage is converted to lethal. Should lethal damage exceed the Disabled stage, the target is rendered unconscious and is dying (follow the regular rules for stabilization).

Dealing Damage
When you successfully hit someone in combat, roll 1d10 + the attack's damage bonus. Any bonuses to Toughness saves counts as damage reduction. As an option for grittier games, Constitution bonuses only reduce nonlethal damage. Critical hits add +5 to damage.

Changes to the Healing Power
The Healing power changes as follows: whenever you use the Healing power, roll 1d10 + Healing rank to reduce the amount of injury taken. You can only make one Healing roll per injury, unless you have the Total Healing extra (so keep track of injuries separately). If you don't recover all of the damage dealt by a particular injury, any leftover damage must heal normally.

Conclusion
And that's about all there is to it for the DTS. I used a d10 for damage to coincide with the 2d10 roll I was using as opposed to the standard d20 roll. I prefer the predictability of a bell curve from rolling 2d10 as opposed to the randomness of flat distribution from rolling 1d20, and no change to DCs was necessary. As for critical hits, I ruled that rolling a 20 on 2d10 (1% chance) automatically produces a critical hit (no threat roll required), thus speeding up the process of critting. I made the DTS because I find it easier to track down damage the old-fashion way as opposed to figuring out degrees of failure in my head (and modifying the Toughness save due to injuries).

In practice, the DTS ran very smooth for me and my players. Tracking injury was a breeze and fights lasted about the same amount of time, from either drawn out fights to quick, three-round fights, due to the flat (and wide) distribution of a 1d10 roll and taking Toughness as damage reduction into account.

In practice, the DTS ran very smooth for me and my players. Tracking injury was a breeze and fights lasted about the same amount of time, from either drawn out fights to quick, three-round fights, due to the flat (and wide) distribution of a 1d10 roll and taking Toughness as damage reduction into account.

In the future, I'd like to run some sort of exotic fantasy campaign using M&M.

[Marley117]

Sooo is anyone up for running an M&M campaign on here?

[bushido11]

Sooo is anyone up for running an M&M campaign on here?

What kind of M&M campaign are you looking for?

[Marley117]

I am not so huge into Fantasy, and i'm already in a couple of campaigns as it is. I know you spoke of running one like that though. It would kinda be interesting using the ruleset, but I really want to play in a superhero game heh.

[bushido11]

Marley117: if you're already busy with your current campaigns, then I wouldn't want to trouble you further by adding more on your plate. However, if you can manage to squeeze in another campaign in, I may consider setting up a superhero campaign. PM me on any available times so that we can talk it over.

This invitation is open to any others as well. I'm willing to take up to four players.

[Webhead]

If only I had the free time, I'd be very interested in an M&M game. Alas, I'm booked pretty solid lately. But best of luck to those of you trying to get one together.

Up, up and away!