Mutants and Masterminds vs. HERO

[Jeff T.]

After careful and lengthy deliberation, I will probably stick with HERO. Man, it is close though. I am very impressed with M&M, particularly the art and production of the material. I will definitely be trying to incorporate alot of M&M characters and material into HERO.

M&M has fewer problems than any other superhero RPG except HERO. The main beef with M&M is skill cost is too high, but this can be fixed. If DOJ and FRED hadn't arrived on the scene about a year ago, I would definitely be converted to M&M.

It is wishful thinking, of course, but it would be AWESOME if DOJ could come up to level of production that comes with M&M. A full color book is almost essential for the superhero genre.

That being said, you can't beat HERO's flexibility, detail and power. It is still the best system out there!

I'd be interested in anyone else's thought on M&M vs. HERO as well.

[Monolith]

I love the Freedom City material I have seen. I am already using a modified version of Factor 4 in my Champions game as a group of villains. I have a feeling that everything in FC will be very useful to me because both FC and CU are very comic book based.

As far as the M&M system itself, it is innovative but it reminds me of a fusion of D&D and Marvel. On some levels it just seems too simple to me; but that is just me. I'm a die-hard Hero fan.

As far as color art and such, I will freely admit that both M&M and SAS are beautiful books, but when I hold M&M in my hands it reminds me of a child's picture book. It is thin and insubstantial. The hardcover detracts from the book. In my opinion no book with less than 300 pages should be hardbound. That does not mean that the book isn't full of useful material, because it is, but I think the book is too thin for that price. It is $10.50 more than Champions Universe but only has 40 more pages.

Now I would love to see DOJ produce a 300 page full-color book, but I also understand that they would not be able to do it for less than $60.00, and since people complain about the price of books now I do not think it would go over well.

[Storn]

Mono, I think the page count of MM is misleading. It has a smaller font than Hero/FRED. You really do get your money's worth, in my opinion.

Folks, I'm going to jump on the MM bandwagon. I've run it once, played twice. I like it. A lot. I'm going to be running MM because it plays to my strengths as a GM (quick, interpertive combat) and away from my weaknesses (doing a lot of math in my head). I also like the damage resolution. I like that you take hits and it reduces your chance of standing up to the next hit. The bookkeeping on dmg resolution is so simple, just 1S or 1L for on hit of stun or lethal. And while I don't mind and very much like the damage and all its computations (Body loss, Stun loss, End loss, Con stun) in champions, as a GM I get very easily overwhelmed and flustered.

However, I concede that MM has some balance issues. I think you can build an uber fighting machine even more so than the Hero's famed brick. But I play with a group that is very, very good. If someone comes up with a concept that is too powerful, we change it. that simple.

BUT!!!! but,but...my MM game is opposite weeks from a Champions game. Both games are set in the same universe. The main GM is wondeful at doing STun, ENd in his head, unlike me, and combat moves at a very good clip. So. I don't even have to choose. I choose both systems. In fact, I came up with a new PC character that works better in Champions creation than it does in MM creation.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Storn
Mono, I think the page count of MM is misleading. It has a smaller font than Hero/FRED. You really do get your money's worth, in my opinion.

I agree that it is packed full of material. I was just commenting on the general "feel" of the book when I first picked it up. It was thin and lite. It reminded me of one of the early-reader books I buy for my children: A big heavy cover and thin pages. It just did not seem substantial for the price. I bought it anyway though. I needed the information in the book to convert the Factor 4 characters.

I think people should play whatever game they enjoy to play, but I would be very disappointed to see the same type of book come from Hero Games. Not because I do not color, be cause I do - I was one of the first people on the old boards to ask about a color book, but I think the book needs to be more substantial than 200 pages and should not cost more than a 328 page Star Hero.

[Storn]

I, too, was hoping for color.

But it is not practical for the size of a book that FRED is. Unless $75.00 was charged (or more). Which makes it a frightening prospect to then barely out of the grave DOJ. Just wasn't practical. I totaly understand the decision they made.

And here we are, several books down the road. Product is coming out, product is moving fairly well from what I can tell. MM has an marketing advantage over Champions because of the d20 tie-in. Champions has an marketing advantage over MM because of the name "Champions"... both have sold well. So go figure.

I think it supports the theory that I first heard from steve peterson. Every time there is a new superhero product, hero sales of Champions products goes up.

[misterdeath]

Well, Mutants and Masterminds impresses me a lot more than Silver Age Sentinels does, quite frankly. I like the changes that M&M makes to the d20/OGL. Makes things much more playable. It's a quick and dirty system that actually seems to work.

If I didn't already have Hero, I'd be tempted to take M&M and make it a "generic system" and use it for nearly everything. It's that flexible a system.

But, I have Hero, and, honestly, the time I have to revamp a game from scratch is pretty limited. So...

My first thought upon seeing the M&M book, "Damn this is small. Good thing they've got all those color pages and left out the rest of the book."

That was very unfair. It's pretty complete, IMO.

Not as flexible as Hero. Probably not as flexible as Fuzion. But complete. And workable.

D

[buzz]

I'm still making my way through M&M, and I'm actually surprised how unimpressed I am. I was chomping at the bit before it was released. Not that I don't think it's pretty amazing, particularly for what it accomplishes within the d20 framework, but I still feel more comfortable with HERO.

I lurk on the Green Ronin boards, and it's interesting, now that the M&M "hype" is dying down a bit, to see the issues that people are starting to find with the system. Point costs in general seem to be a hotly-debated topic, as well as the nature of noncombat vs. combat movement (E.g., even high ranks in Flight or Speed translate to only 20mph or so in combat, yet outside of combat, using Super-Flight/Speed, characters can move at ridiculous speeds), for starters.

This is all obviously due to the fact that M&M is still a 1st edition, so players are going to find the chinks in its armor. The same thing happened with SAS. Like M&M, it was the "HERO-killer" at first, but now people have actually played the darn thing and are finding that there are areas that need work, e.g., balancing characters. SAS seems to need even stricter GM supervision during chargen than HERO.

I've also found both SAS and M&M to be a lot more complicated than they let on. In their efforts to not be like HERO, I find that alternatives are introduced that aren't necessarily any easier. I mean, I'm still not sure when an Extra in M&M is a +1 cost or a +(Other Power - 1) cost addition.

I guess it boils down to the fact that HERO, having been hammered on by players and designers for 22 years, has "matured." It's robust and fine-tuned. Add to this that it is still an order of magnitude more flexible than either of the above, I'm more than willing to deal with the crunchiness and slow combat. (Though combats in my group seem to always go pretty fast; my D&D3e groups take way longer to resolve combat.)

I'm still making my way through the M&M book, though, and will be playing in a campaign in a few weeks. We'll see how it goes. Even in a best-case scenario, I see myself playing both.

And I woulnd't mind giving SAS a try, either.

[Jeff T.]

I agree the book 'feels' smaller than it really is, I might not have bought it had I not heard such good things about it beforehand.

[mattingly]

"Small" isn't really a fair term for the book; I'd go more for "lean." The fact that you can fit an entire character sheet on half a page (including backstory and picture) is pretty cool.

I've played both M+M and SAS, and prefer M+M to SAS, but prefer HERO to either. I've only played M+M five or six times, and at first, combats took at least as long as HERO, since we had to keep flipping back to the book for rules, but once our group got into the swing of things, combats were moderately faster than HERO (20% faster, tops).

Many of the benefits that M+M offers over HERO, we'd already adopted as house rules for our Champions campaign (Hero Points, mainly), but although they looked cool at first, when we tried porting them over to Champions (at 5 Hero Points per character), I realized that M+M needs Hero Points to work, and HERO doesn't. Besides, I'm not at all convinced that M+M would work for any other genre. Sure, it's d20, but it's not standard d20, so it'd be hard to mix in supers, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and superagents all into the same game. No problem for HERO.

[Yamo]

This isn't much of a contest if you've never roleplayed superheroes and never want to.

I prefer HERO because it's universal and adapts to any setting.

I've never wanted to play a superhero, however. The whole comic book genre has always seemed silly to me. I mean, you have a grown man prancing around in tights calling himself Captain Power, or somesuch. Come on! I'll stick with my nice, down-to-Earth elves and dragons, thank you.

Okay, so I'm kidding a little there, but my point remains. M&M doesn't stand out as competition to HERO unless you're interested in the specific genre it covers.

[Storn]

Originally posted by Yamo
This isn't much of a contest if you've never roleplayed superheroes and never want to.

I prefer HERO because it's universal and adapts to any setting.

I've never wanted to play a superhero, however. The whole comic book genre has always seemed silly to me. I mean, you have a grown man prancing around in tights calling himself Captain Power, or somesuch. Come on! I'll stick with my nice, down-to-Earth elves and dragons, thank you.

Okay, so I'm kidding a little there, but my point remains. M&M doesn't stand out as competition to HERO unless you're interested in the specific genre it covers.

Yamo, I couldn't disagree more. One of the brilliant things, IMO, is that M&M is crafted to take advantage of the PREMIERE fantasy game. d20. Listen, I don't care for d20. In fact, hated it after running it a couple of times.

But MM? Now, I can take that combat & feats & powers rule set and use every single fantasy critter, spell, monster manual with just a tiny bit of thought and tweaking. And make d20 SO much better, easier than it is in its WoTC incarnation. Yet I have a HUGE library to utilize.

Now granted, MM fantasy would probably be pretty high powered, high fantasy-like game. For low fantasy, Fantasy hero rocks. No doubt about it. But to dismiss MM as "no competition"... hmmm... I really don't think so. I could be completely wrong.... but I've seen the threads on MM fantasy... its a movement. It has a built in market.

[Jerry A!]

I have to agree with Storn on this one. Plan within the next two years people will be refering to D20 "proper" and D20 "Green Ronin".

The changes are that good.

Though, Storn, I will disagree with you on the low fantasy. I believe that it can easily be done, just cap out at a PL5-7.

And none of that 3:1 skill/power point nonsense!

[Yamo]

I have to agree with Storn on this one. Plan within the next two years people will be refering to D20 "proper" and D20 "Green Ronin".

Somehow I simply doubt this. WotC/Hasbro is a juggernaut. GR is a neat little company, but the emphasis here has to be on the "little." In the hardcore, online RPG.net-type crowd, where Little Fears and The Window are household names, GR's M&M d20 system will be highly regarded, yes, but they don't have the funds or the public profile to push their product up alongside d20 in the minds of the "real world" silent majority of gamers who just want to play "that D&D stuff ." It's a good system, yes, but Joe and Jane Gamer are never going to be mentioning it in the same breath as "real"' d20. It's way too far under the radar.

And Storn's point is well-taken, but frankly, some people are never going to come on board with feats, saving throws, a non-bell curving single d20 roll resolution mechanic, or anything else distinctively d20, no matter how heavily-modified. I know, as I'm one of them. M&M is good, but it's just not as flexible as HERO and the mechanics just don't hold up for me.

[buzz]

Originally posted by Yamo
Somehow I simply doubt this. WotC/Hasbro is a juggernaut. GR is a neat little company, but the emphasis here has to be on the "little." In the hardcore, online RPG.net-type crowd, where Little Fears and The Window are household names, GR's M&M d20 system will be highly regarded, yes, but they don't have the funds or the public profile to push their product up alongside d20 in the minds of the "real world" silent majority of gamers who just want to play "that D&D stuff ." It's a good system, yes, but Joe and Jane Gamer are never going to be mentioning it in the same breath as "real"' d20. It's way too far under the radar.

I don't know. As far as d20 companies go, GR is probably one of the, if not THE, most highly-regarded. M&M has been an explosive product for them. It's sold out everywhere. The initial hype over SAS pales in comparison.

Take a look at their forums sometime. The M&M forum outpaces the other GR product forums in traffic by several orders of magnitude. I woulnd't be surprised if that forum alone doesn't compare favorably to the traffic we get here on the HERO boards. Add to this that GR is able to get their product into stores like Waldenbooks, and that M&M is essentially a d20 ("Just like D&D, kids!") supers game... well, comparing it to the indie games RPG.net covets is kind of off. M&M is very much "on the radar" of D&D/d20 gamers. At ENworld, fwiw, there's little talk of SAS d20 or other d20 supers games; M&M is steadily becoming the d20 supers game of choice.

Now, GR isn't going to be outgrowing WotC anytime, but I think you're short-selling the popularity of this game. I don't know if it's ever going to become "the other d20", but I have a good feeling it may very well become "the supers game you play if you don't play Champions."

[Monolith]

Originally posted by buzz
Take a look at their forums sometime. The M&M forum outpaces the other GR product forums in traffic by several orders of magnitude. I woulnd't be surprised if that forum alone doesn't compare favorably to the traffic we get here on the HERO boards.

Green Ronin Forum: 16,100 posts since it inception.
Nato's Hero Forum: 6,400 posts in one month.

I don't think they are that close to us.