Back the Mutants & Masterminds Kickstarter! (Patreon)

This is an unusual post for my Patreon. I am actively boosting Green Ronin's Kickstarter for Mutants & Masterminds 4th edition.

This isn't my Kickstarter. I'm not currently on-staff at Green Ronin, and I had nothing to do with any version of M&M.

But there are lots of reasons I am encouraging you to go pledge.

First, Gren Ronin is a great company who have been VERY good to me, and to a lot of other game creators. I consider the Green Ronin crew friends, and they are among the very best people.

Second, M&M is an AMAZING game system with an amazing fanbase. As a publisher I've released a ton of 3rd party M&M products, and done very well with them.. I am a huge fan of the game design work of Chris Pramas, Alex Thomas, and Steve Kenson, and having seen the playtest for 4th edition, I am super-excited for the direction this game is going.

Third, even though Green Ronin is (quite reasonably) moving away from the OGL, they are adding a new license that will allow publishers to make new adventures, sourcebooks, and settings for their game. They don't HAVE to do that, and the fact they are absolutely earns my loyalty.

But also? I am a fan of the game line. I have played every version of M&M available since 1st edition was published in 2002. I have liked each edition better than the one before it, and I want to see two decades of superhero game publishing excellence get rewarded.

(Celestial, one of my M&M OCs, art by dear departed friend Marc Curlee)

So while this is a game I had NOTHING to do with the creation of, WOW have I played M&M a lot. How much?

Let me tell you about my characters.

No, seriously, the main content of this post is a list of PCs I have played with M&M. I feel there's no better way to showcase how good the game is than to highlight the huge range of character types I've had very satisfying experiences playing. Besides, I have pictures!

(And, chances are, I've forgotten some characters -- my apologies to any GM I slight by not including my PC from their game!)

Laughing Skull -- A supernatural sonic superhero with a "Death Knell" attack. Kinda like if Black Canary and Ghost Rider had a Make Mine Amalgam character.

Sigil -- What if Shazam transformed by drawing a rune on his chest? That was the concept for Sigil, who had the rune in question as a symbol on his chest. Which annoyed him, because that's kinda like having an Off switch on your chest, but it was part of his power set.

My friend Marc Curlee designed a costume for Sigil, which Jacob found and colored for me.

Swift -- A flying speedster. After several fun game sessions I made a custom figure for this character... and the campaign ended before I could use it. :P That's NOT the game system's fault though!

Mike "Scraphead" McCullagh -- In a "High School Students With Secret Powers"/"Meddling Kids"/"Vampires And Werewolves And mage Oh My" setting, Scraphead had Techometry, the psychic ability to understand how handled objects could be put together, and how they had been put together, and what would allow them to perform specific tasks. This made him an amazing mechanic, gunsmith, engineer, computer programmer, and carpenter. The concept could have been very difficult to create in many came systems, but in M&M and it was easy.

Lt. Goderic Penrose, Esq -- A young Brittarian knight in my friend marc Curlee's "Flntlock Fantasy" game. This game began in pathfinder 1e, switched to M&M, then switched back to Pf1. There were reasons for all of that, but the thing that impressed ALL of us was that we could build our Pf1 characters in M&M, and while there were clearly differences, they all felt like the same people.

Troubleshooter -- Conceptually Troubleshooter began as "What if the Joker decided he needed a sidekick, like Robin, kidnapped a kid, turned him into a killing machine, but the kid ended up turning on his old Boss and becoming a hero?" That got mixed with a bit of the Punisher and a bit of the Rocketeer. Troubleshooter wore body armor and carried a pistol that fired BIG bullets, and had a flight pack. He was a wisecracking detective and saboteur who used jokes to throw his foes off guard... and to hide his pain.

Jah-Tok -- Jah-Tok was a 7-foot-tall 4-armed barbarian in a Swords and Sandals Planetary Romance setting. Think Barsoom meets the Hyborian Age by way of Greek Myth. This was very much NOT a superhero game, and it was fascinating to see how well M&M handled swordsmen, sorcerers, thieves, and monsters.

Celestial: Celestial was a flying powerhouse with fire control powers. He was very much a Truth, Liberty, and Justice kind of character, like Superman but instead of 30 unrelated powers, Celestial was strong, tough, could fly... and had pyrokinesis.

I adored Celestial, and in addition to having my friend Marc Curlee draw him (above), I made a custom miniature I used in the campaign.

(My custom Celestial miniature I kitbashed together from three different Heroclix)

The Nemean -- A Pulp Era female brick, the Nemean was from a line of people infused with the power of the pelt of the Nemean Lion (as slain by Hercules). I played this character in a game run by Jon Leitheusser (M&M line developer at the time) and Chris Pramas (who was playing a flying armor suit character, the Winged Hussar).

El Grande -- I originally played El Grande as a Hero system "Brick" Luchador character in a long-running game of my friend Carl. I later rebooted him, as a malleable hero halfway between Bouncing Boy and Plasticman, in a M&M game run by Crystal Frasier. I made a custom El Grande figure, but the picture I took of it is terribad.

I'm showing you anyway.

Huntsman -- Many years ago, I realized you could easily swap the Rogue's Galleries of Batman and Spiderman. I have no trouble seeing Batman face off against Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Mysterio, and Sandman; nor Spider-Man opposing Bane, Clayface, the Joker., and Scarecrow. And you can swap Black Cat and Catwoman in MOST of their plots.

This led me to begin playing with what happens if you build a Spider-Themed version of Batman? In the old days I tried to build that character as "Arachknight" in various superhero RPGS, and it never worked. But when I recently tried the idea as Huntsman, in M&M, it was PERFECT. So perfect, I had Jacob Blackmon do some art of the character.

Ursus -- "What if Wolverine was a Russian Superhero active since the 1950s who was the size of Dolph Lungren?" Yeah, not my most original concept, but it was fun and simple. Simple was important, because this was the character I played while on Chemo.

The Lantern -- The lantern was my stab at a classic Pulp Mystery Man style character of a type I often call The Fedora Hero. He's supposed to be the inheritor of a long line of special operatives since the days of the Midnight Ride, trained from birth by the secretive Order of William Dawes to find hidden threats to the US, oppose them, and call them out. He has contacts through silversmiths worldwide, and a cloak-pin Lantern which can illuminate a cone and help find clues. I actually got to play this as a Playtest 4th Ed M&M character under Alex Thomas!

Custom Art by Jacob Blackmon

Obviously, I'll be playing in a 4th edition game at somepoint, and I want that game to have as robust a release schedule and early options as possible! So, entirely out of my own desire to get a great game, I encourage you to Go Pledge Now!

(This article is not covered by the OGL).