Mutant Dragons and Dungeon Masterminds?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:00 am

last night I started thinking about running a modded M&M, using D&D style equipment and money instead of the equipment feat, and treating PL like actual levels (in that players accumulate experience points and grow in PL).

I'm thinking it will be best to use the Mastermind Manual's HP variant, so I don't have to worry about what damage bonus each weapon would have or some shit like that.

Anyone tried this? Anyone able to see potential pitfalls right off the bat?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:04 am

You are going to have to do something about the stunting and alternate power system, since those things pretty much allow any hero to overcome any kind of obstacle with any skillset.

Unless you actually want to do that; M&M does any kind of protection really badly. While due to the action system it's very hard to make a totally useless character as long as you have a fully-charged blast it's also very easy to make some characters better than others. The stunting/alternate power system was done as a slap-patch 'perfect defense' to ensure that some characters didn't always get the spotlight but if you get rid of that then you need to put a tight reign on character creation.

Honestly, I'd use another system. Mutants and Masterminds is basically designed to get heroes from point A to point D while curbstomping obstacles B and C as long as you're creative enough. Dungeons and Dragons actually wants its obstacles to be meaningful, so.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:47 am

well, what I'm looking for is a game that combines a few of the things I like, and doesn't include things I hate, about various systems:

Complete Point Buy Character Creation
-Classes are too restricting. In D&D my Item Crafting Errol Flynn runequest character would be a shitty Rog/Artificer combo. In WoD he'd be a mage with dots of Melee and playing in an unplayable system. In Runequest, he's fucked if something eats his rapier because rapier requires the Rapier skill, and that doesn't let him use ANY other sword.
Combat, even big battles that are a huge part of the story, don't take all fucking night and leave some players sitting on their thumb for fifteen minutes at a time because they don't have enough combat actions.
-IC Errol Flynn has a respectable 3 CA. The knight in the party has 4. The big bruiser monsters we had to fight last night had 4 and 5 respectively. There were also six players. God damn that battle took too fucking long. It was not helped by the "realistic" runequest battle system.
Weapon proficiency isn't an all or nothing locked thing.
-In Runequest, you pretty much have to specialize in one weapon type, with maybe a backup that you're substantially less practiced with. Some of these are fairly broad (1H Sword, 2H Sword, Dagger, 1H Axe, 2H Axe) some are very narrow (Rapier, 1H Hammer, 2H Hammer). As mentioned above, if something eats my rapier (which happened) IC Errol Flynn is fucked. I was lucky my helmet was the same encumbrance as a rapier and my buddy had an enchanted bracelet that cast "Improvised Weapon" (turns an item into a magical duplicate of a weapon, but it looks the same, so I was stabbing bitches with my HAT. admittedly that was awesome....). D&D has something similar to this problem, but to a slightly lesser degree, and it's more easily fixed. Storyteller System only fucks you like this on specializations, so if the Sword you have a melee specialty in gets eaten, you can grab your buddy's backup and just lose out on bonus dice from occasionally rolling a 10.
Isn't episodic, nor does it has an equipment system based on being episodic.
M&M treats equipment as trivial. One point give you a feat that gives you 5 points to spend on mundane equipment, and if it's destroyed you don't give a shit because the base back home has a Matrix style rack full of Masterwork Greatswords. At the same time, if you're an item crafter, you make items that stick around for anywhere from one scene to one session, and if you want to acquire it permanently, you have to put points into the Device power, which could take fucking forever because you get like one CP a session, and Device costs 3-4p/rank. This means that if Batman builds a new vehicle, he has it for one night, and after that has to save up for ten to twenty sessions before he can have it hanging around the cave to use whenever necessary. This is fine for an episodic Super's game, but I want to run fantasy where item crafters don't take three months of REAL time to build shit.
Doesn't say "What real world physics and expectations? Oh.... those. Yeah fuck those and fuck you."
Glorantha, Runequest's Original setting, has no fucking physics. Or rather, there's, for example, no gravity. Things just inherently move towards the ground because that's where they belong. Birds don't fly because they have wings, they have wings because they fly. Acid isn't countered by bases, it is symbolic of fire because it burns, so your best action after getting hit with acid is seriously to throw water on yourself, instead of running to the privy or wash room and finding lye soap.
Has a working, or at least workable system that wasn't made by nor attracts elitist "ROLEplay not ROLLplay" assholes who can't fucking design there way out of a god damned paper fucking bag.
Fuck Rein-dot-hagen. Fuck my Werewolf ST in any game outside of WoD (goddamned rogues not being able to sneak attack in a flank realism bullshit....)
Doesn't have gygaxian bullshit baggage
Fuck that dead asshole for his Kill the Players Rocks Fall Bullshit. Killing a person's character doesn't teach lessons or build character, it pisses them the hell off and forces them to incorporate a new character into an established group. I can understand the occasional character death, especially when it's a natural consequence of the player's own stupidity (that does occasionally teach a lesson, like "don't walk around with improvised explosives in your backpack"), but when the DM is actively against the PCs, that's bullshit, and yet games still encourage it to varying degrees.
No god damned rule 0 crap.
There are rules for a fucking reason. No the DM cannot blatantly ignore whatever rules he doesn't like. He can change them after careful consideration if it makes for a better game, but he's not fucking GOD. AND THE NEXT ONE I MEET WHO FUCKING ACTS LIKE THAT IS GOING TO FUCKING GET SHOT WITH A HAMMER

...ok, I think I'm done venting for now...
and yeah... the last few are flavour/group stuff...

K · Post by K » Mon Jan 04, 2010 6:25 am

http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/su ... review.pdf

Been done.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 6:29 am

I've heard of that book, if it's anything like their Mecha and Manga book I consider it pointless. From a quick glance through of Me&Ma, it looked like just a bunch of sample characters and some "racial" templates, I can do that myself.

K · Post by K » Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:23 am

Its MnM and DnD. Maybe not the ratios of each you'd want, but at a glance it meets some of your criteria.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:27 am

any previews of it online or anything? Haven't seen it in a bookstore yet and M&M is a bit too obscure to be easily torrented.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 12:26 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:I've heard of that book, if it's anything like their Mecha and Manga book I consider it pointless. From a quick glance through of Me&Ma, it looked like just a bunch of sample characters and some "racial" templates, I can do that myself.

Its like Mecha and Manga in that regard.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:46 pm

I don't follow. At all. You have severe problems with Runequest, which is understandable because Runequest sucks. You have severe problems with WoD, which is again not surprising, but hardly even relevant because WoD doesn't really do Fantasy. And your problem with using D&D straight is... what exactly?

-Classes are too restricting.

Too restricting for what? You want to play a guy who stabs people with a rapier and crafts magic items? In D&D you can just do that. As a Cleric, or a Duskblade, or a Tome Fighter. What else do you want to do?

Doesn't have gygaxian bullshit baggage

That can't be given to you. By anything. Gygax is one of the founders of Role Playing, so if someone has a Role Playing Game at all it is going to be a potential breeding ground for weird Gygaxian headtrips. You can voluntarily not do that, but no system can guaranty that it won't happen.

No god damned rule 0 crap.

Again, not going to happen. Although in this case the reason for it is not historical but mathematical. It is actually physically impossible to have a game system that does not include the rule "you can make new rules." That's not a voluntary choice or lazy writing, that's a cold hard fact about the nature of 1 + 1 = 2.

So take a step back for a moment. I might suggest simple 3e or even 4e D&D, or GURPS Fantasy, or any of a number of systems. But so far, of the three bullet points that rule out D&D, one of them is an unavoidable contingency of time, and the other is an inescapable truth of mathematical reality. So I'm not convinced that there is any system that will make you happy, or that there could be.

-Username17

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 3:21 pm

I've had similar problems as you Prak Anima, I've also considered combining D&D and M&M, the short answer is don't do it.

You could maybe make a system that straddles the two but it would be long and arduous, your house rules would be as long as the PHB, because you'd be making a whole new system.

The best course of action is to pick one system and cherry pick the best parts from the other. If you want to go with Mutants and Masterminds you can adopt a fantasy flavour for your campaigns, you don't need Wizards and Warlocks to pull this off. Just stick between PL 8-12 because the game gets wonkier the farther away you get from level 10. If you want to stick with D&D, maybe because you have adventure paths or whatever then make a point buy system for making a character, it's not that hard. Also you'll probably want to try hero points, but as Lago points out you might want to limit them a bit more than you do in M&M.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:24 pm

Korwin, Thanks, I may still take a look at it if I can find some way of doing that without having to by it before hand.

FrankTrollman wrote:I don't follow. At all. You have severe problems with Runequest, which is understandable because Runequest sucks. You have severe problems with WoD, which is again not surprising, but hardly even relevant because WoD doesn't really do Fantasy. And your problem with using D&D straight is... what exactly?

-Classes are too restricting.
Too restricting for what? You want to play a guy who stabs people with a rapier and crafts magic items? In D&D you can just do that. As a Cleric, or a Duskblade, or a Tome Fighter. What else do you want to do?

Alright, hadn't thought that hard on it... those things hadn't occured to me. Partially because Duskblade is one of those classes that I'm really only vaguely aware of...

Wod could do fantasy with a setting change, but it'd either still be horribly imbalanced, or require a fair amount of house ruling...

Doesn't have gygaxian bullshit baggage
That can't be given to you. By anything. Gygax is one of the founders of Role Playing, so if someone has a Role Playing Game at all it is going to be a potential breeding ground for weird Gygaxian headtrips. You can voluntarily not do that, but no system can guaranty that it won't happen.

No god damned rule 0 crap.
Again, not going to happen. Although in this case the reason for it is not historical but mathematical. It is actually physically impossible to have a game system that does not include the rule "you can make new rules." That's not a voluntary choice or lazy writing, that's a cold hard fact about the nature of 1 + 1 = 2.

Just venting about that shit really...

So take a step back for a moment. I might suggest simple 3e or even 4e D&D, or GURPS Fantasy, or any of a number of systems. But so far, of the three bullet points that rule out D&D, one of them is an unavoidable contingency of time, and the other is an inescapable truth of mathematical reality. So I'm not convinced that there is any system that will make you happy, or that there could be.

-Username17

well, like I said, the last few points on my list were group/setting stuff, and I was just venting (especially the physics thing... I barely fucking know how to act because the GM won't sit down and tell us what's fucking different...).

I'm a fan of classless in general, but, yes, there are plenty of classes in D&D to let me do pretty much what I want with it...

Juton, I wasn't really thinking of hybridizing them that much, more tacking on a couple things from D&D and using a variant rule from the Mastermind's Manual... hell, M&M already has the Wealth system as a variant, and it was designed to take the place of gold for a modern setting, so theoretically just having them buy shit as normal would be fine... though I'm not sure on that...

Well, how'd you try to hybridize them?

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 9:19 pm

I've wanted to try this combo (MnM+DnD) but haven't, mostly out of a fear that I'd fuck it up and I'd destroy my personal archetype of the perfect effect-based fantasy game that isn't HERO or GURPS.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 11:01 pm

I think as a dream list, it's awesome.

It has its practical problems, definitely.

-Crissa