There are powers, and then there are powers about powers: Meta-Powers. This profile looks at the powers used to influence the powers of others, from Power Mimicry and Power Theft to Power Nullification and Nemesis, with a close look at the Variable effect from the core rules, the foundation of many of these powers. For M&M Third Edition.
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This chapter picks up right where Chapter 4 left off, but can also be played as a stand-alone adventure. This PDF is available for just $3.99, and uses the Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition rules.
Emerald City Knights Chapter 5: Rise of the Masterminds (PDF)
]]>One of those ways was producing smaller, focused products we could deliver electronically in PDF format to provide support for our games. We started with the launch of Mutants & Masterminds, Third Edition, figuring the most useful support for that game out of the gate was villains for the heroes to fight. So we came up with what we initially called "Villain of the Week": a single bad guy, written up with game stats, background, and adventure hooks, with an "app price" of 99 cents, like buying a song on iTunes. We worked on getting at least a month's worth of releases prepped and ready to go before we launched the series, which we eventually named "Threat Report" making it a weekly update from AEGIS, the super-agency dealing with villains in the setting.
Threat Report was well-received. It didn't do as well, sales-wise, as a print product, but it also didn't need to: the overhead costs for the individual issues was lower, so we could sell to a smaller audience. Some villains did better than others, but all of the issues at least broke even, and continued to do well afterwards. It proved to us that a weekly series of smaller products was viable, and a good way to provide continuing support for a game that didn't involve producing a large book. As a plus, we could compile the smaller products and use them to produce a book eventually, as we've done with Threat Report.
Of course, the weekly publishing process was also a learning experience. We had to greatly compress our usual production timeline. Even getting a month or so ahead of the publishing dates, we needed to produce and develop text, art, and layout quickly. Having a standardized layout helped, something we carried over to the Power Profiles series. We needed to make sure our art orders were planned well in advance. Even then, art did not always keep pace with the text, leading to occasional hold-ups or reschedules as art came in late or in a different order. We also learned to standardize our art: in Power Profiles, each issue has the same art specs in terms of size and placement, allowing finished art to fit into the layout quickly and easily (unlike the character pieces in Threat Report, which often involved reflowing and adjusting text and layout).
On the other hand, the weekly schedule made our products more responsive: we got regular feedback from fans on our forums about what they liked and didn't about the format and content. Threads began devoted to speculation and wish-lists on future releases as well as reviewing the current ones. So later issues in the series benefited from information we would not have gotten if they had all been chapters of the same book.
After we completed a full year's worth of issues for Threat Report, we decided to wrap it up and launched the Power Profiles series. Fans of Threat Report were initially uncertain but Power Profiles has proven, if anything, to be more popular than Threat Report, allowing us to provide another type of regular support for M&M. The smaller electronic format has done so well that we've expanded it to our other games lines, offering similar (although not weekly) products for Dragon Age (and, eventually, A Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying). The format has also allowed us to provide more "generic" support for the Adventure Gaming Engine, which has met with great fan approval.
As new innovations continue to change how publishing happens, you can expect to see us continue to experiment with new formats, new kinds of products, and new ways of delivering them to you for your gaming enjoyment. With the popularity of Kickstarter as a funding and marketing mechanism, who knows, there might be an offering there in the future...
Have a type of product or publishing you think we should be exploring? Hit our forums and let us know!
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Morphing Powers provide literal flexibility, from being able to stretch and change your shape to shifting around all of your physical abilities at will. This profile looks at the Morph effect and the Transformed condition alongside powers from Stretching and Malleable Form to full-fledged Shapeshifting. For M&M Third Edition.
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Now available for pre-order in our Green Ronin Online Store, it's Threat Report! When you pre-order through our online store you'll be offered the PDF version for just $5 during checkout. Or, if your local games retailer participates in our GR Pre-Order Plus Program, when you pre-order the print book there, they can give you a coupon code good for the same $5 PDF from our online store.
The Silver Storm has turned Emerald City from a quiet Pacific Northwest metropolis to a hub of super-criminal activity, and AEGIS—the American Elite Government Intervention Service—is on the job. Threat Report presents profiles on dozens of the new supervillains endangering Emerald City and the world. From "stormers" newly granted their powers to ancient and eldritch evils, from beneath Emerald City's streets to other dimensions and times, Threat Report gives you a plethora of villains to challenge your players. This book compiles most of Green Ronin's Threat Report series of electronic villain profiles, along with new content created just for this collection. You'll find a variety of villains ready-made for your Mutants & Masterminds game, from low-level mercenaries for hire to super-powered thugs and cosmic world-beaters, even gods pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Heroes get ready because the villains of Emerald City are on the loose!
New in this collection:
If Power Profiles demonstrate anything, it's that powers come in all types, including powers that aren't really "powers" per se, but extraordinary gifts of talent or training. Talent Powers takes a look at how to apply the power effects from M&M to create some extraordinary abilities that don't rely on exotic radiation, alien technology, or mystical or psychic awareness: nothing but pure talent! For M&M Third Edition.
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Awards can be a contentious and passionate affair regardless of how the they are determined or what organization hands them out. Controversy and impassioned critique springs up around award nominees and winners; whether Nobel or Pulitzer, Origins or ENnies, it makes no difference when passionate people have strongly held opinions on their interests. In the wake of seemingly annual arguments over awards and their results I've seen people become disheartened and disinterested, cynical even, but I was reminded the other day why I still care and why, at least in the realm of the hobby game industry I think you should, too.
The ENnie awards ask nominees to submit a sound file or a song that they would like to play during the few seconds between when the award is announced and when the winner (should that be you) makes it up to the stage to accept the award. A few years ago I got my turn to pick something and I chose Pump It from the Black Eyed Peas, which just happened to be an upbeat song that I personally liked. As it turns out, songs that get right to the groove within the first few seconds are rarer than you might think but Pump It started off with a blazing sample from Dick Dale's Misirlou and fit what we needed to my satisfaction. That year we were honored with several nominations in the ENnies and the whole company turned out for the ceremony to see if we'd make it past the final cut.
As it happens that year at the ENnies was rather a high point for Green Ronin and to our genuine surprise we were honored with several silver and gold medals. It was an emotional night for many reasons, not the least of which because the company had been hit hard by the catastrophic failure of a key business partner that lost our little company (and many others) a staggering amount of money (search "Osseum debacle" if you're curious). Some of the books up for honors that night were things we'd released to critical acclaim and then never seen a penny from sales. We'd had a very real fear that the company wouldn't survive at all, let alone be attending Gen Con and reaping awards. That night things went our way and time after time as the award was announced and our "theme song" began to play, the gathered crowd started clapping along *clapclap* *clap* *clapclap* *clap* as our people made their way to the stage. That night wasn't about "winning" and was NEVER about "beating" our esteemed competition but was all about validation (in spite of our troubles, we'd reached people with our products), inspiration (people were essentially asking us to keep doing what we were doing), and, most movingly for me, camaraderie (fans and colleagues alike were happy for us, were cheering with us, were clapping along and singing our song and the message was loud and clear that we were all in it together). At that moment nobody gave a whit about how the awards were calculated or whether there was sufficient evidence that a body of unholy neutrality had empirically calculated the page density per dollar value of each nominated product or whatever the annual complaints about the process might have been. That night the ballroom resounded with a crowd of people cheering and clapping along, enjoying our surprise and glee, gracious and giving and celebratory.
I realize I'm beginning to sound like Sally Field ("...I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!") but bear with me. That night at the ENnie Awards has become one of my cherished memories. Although Green Ronin as a company was still pretty young, everyone in the company (and several of our most valued freelancers) had been working in the industry for many years. For some of us it was the first time in more than a decade of work or more that we'd experienced that kind of reception. To this day I can't hear that song without breaking into a huge, nostalgic grin. I've had many other similar nights since, though few of them have involved Green Ronin. In the years since our awards blow-out experience we've had the pleasure to see numerous other colleagues share our experience from center stage. I clapped my hands sore for our friends at Paizo one recent year and watched our colleagues at Evil Hat accept some well-deserved awards brimming over with goodwill because I remember how I felt and I'm so pleased they're getting a chance, too. Creators of websites I've never visited, designers of games I've never played (and sometimes would never play), podcasts I've never listened to, I just can't help myself but be happy for everyone who gets a moment of recognition for the hard work, dreams, and inspiration they've poured into whatever it is they've done. In a job where it's much more likely that you'll hear from someone who can't believe you've "screwed up" Superman's stats or some such, a little positive feedback goes a long way. I can't bring myself to be stingy when it comes to these fleeting awards. I hope you'll join me in resisting the cynicism that can surround awards and join hobby game fans in offering a few kudos to your favorite game companies, designers, and systems this awards season.
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Want powers that have some impact? Kinetic Powers have a lot of impact, enough to blast through steel and stone, and they can take a lot of impact, too, blocking bullets, blasts, and explosions. From telekinesis to projected force field and kinetic blasts, the powers in this profile can put things into motion or stop them in their tracks. For M&M Third Edition.
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My Wednesday night game has been going strong for, wow, about 8 years! We tend to jump from system to system depending on who's free to GM. Games typically run for months or years depending on interest. The group initially got together to play a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition campaign I ran for a year and then another GM ran for at least another year. A number of the other players are deeply interested and involved with the "indie" games community, so we see a lot of cool things make their way to the tabletop. We've played In A Wicked Age, Lady Blackbird, The Burning Wheel, The Mouse Guard RPG, REIGN, Mutant City Blues, Mutants & Masterminds, and a lot more I'm not remembering at the moment. Currently we're playing in a long-running D&D 4th Edition game in which we're making our way through a thoroughly re-imagined version of the classic Expedition to the Barrier Peaks adventure. Alternating with that is a playtest of a D&D-like game by some industry veterans, about which I can't say much due to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
My character in the D&D 4th Edition game is Rufus Gravenstone. He started the campaign as a Cleric, but at 5th level I moved to California for about two years, so Rufus disappeared from the story. When I moved back to Seattle, Rufus returned, but as an Avenger since the party had plenty of healers and I wanted to see how the Avenger worked anyway. No one could accuse me of powergaming, a Dwarven Avenger? Shyaeh, right. Anyway, that game is fun because every fight is a huge set-piece battle with special rules that really challenge us to think about ways to deal with the special rules.
Thursday night is my other game night. I host the game at my place and it's only been going for a few months now. This group is made up of a bunch of game designers including Green Ronin's own Chris Pramas, HeroClix game designer Seth Johnson, Shadowrun master Mike Mulvihill, and a couple of other friends from my time at WizKids. Initially I ran Mutants & Masterminds (using characters generated by rolling on the Quickstart Character Generator included in the M&M GM's Kit) and Seth ran Old School Hack for a bit. Since then, we've switched gears to playing an A Song of Ice and Fire series in which we're members of House Greenscayle with the house motto, "Cold Seas. Cold Blood." We're sworn to House Greyjoy and have already encountered (and taken prisoner) one of the Sand Snakes, learned we're somehow involved with the machinations of Littlefinger, and some other fishy goings-on we can't quite believe.
Starting just a week or two ago, I started running a Deadlands: Reloaded game using the Savage Worlds rules. I love the Deadlands setting and the Savage Worlds rules, so it didn't take much prodding to get me to run it. I'm re-using an adventure I ran when the first edition of Deadlands came out in the mid-90s that works really well to get a bunch of unrelated PCs together right off the bat. I call it "Welcome to Ghost Town," but I don't think I've ever actually told anyone the title before. I may write up a longer description for the Pinnacle site at some point, but the high points are that the heroes arrive in the same town on the same day at roughly the same time for one reason or another only to find the entire town deserted. Since the PCs are the only people wandering around, they get together and try to figure out exactly what happened. Where it goes from there... well, I haven't run the next part for my players, so I probably shouldn't say more! The Deadlands game may go on for a while, but I'm hoping to jump back into an M&M game, too! Fantasy and super-hero games are definitely my favorite genres to play and GM.
Those are my game nights, but that doesn't include the board and card games I play. I work a day job with one of the guys from the Thursday game and we play Magic: The Gathering, Dominion, Summoner Wars, or, lately, Lords of Waterdeep every day at lunch. One could say I like me some games.
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Paladins and priests, shamans and monks, the pious and
the revered from virtually any faith you can imagine, they
all gain new options and potency in your AGE-powered
campaign when you add in this product's centerpiece: the
Divine Gift talent. Whether your character is a devotee of Love or War, a
practitioner of Law or Chaos, or a servant of Fate, this
kit offers ways to demonstrate the power of her faith. AGE (Adventure Game Engine) products are fully compatible with the Dragon Age RPG.
AGE Explorations: Gifts of the Gods]]>
From the unleashed power of a hurricane wind or destructive tornado to drawing the breath from your target's lungs, Air Powers command the life-giving atmosphere all around us. Whip up wind blasts and shields to protect you from attack. Fly on the wings of the wind, and let it carry your words across great distances as you snuff out fires and the consciousness of your foes just as easily. For M&M Third Edition.
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Our mutants romped and rampaged through the Gamma World landscape, going through the available modules (Legion of Gold, then Famine in Far-Go and Albuquerque Starport) along with some home-brew until we ran out of stuff. Fortunately, by then I had expanded my horizons to include Dungeons & Dragons and took the crossover guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide to heart: a dimensional doorway later, and our mutants were romping and rampaging through Greyhawk and the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Yes, it was an unabashedly "Monty Haul" campaign, with crystal-skinned mutants dual-wielding force swords and magical tridents, but we had a blast. In later D&D games, some of those old Gamma World characters were actually promoted to demi-godhood and the objects of obscure cults.
I've managed to play every edition of Gamma World since then for at least one session. (Unfortunately, a few of those games, like the fourth edition and the Alternity edition, only lasted for one session.) And, yes, that includes Metamorphosis Alpha (which I managed to find used, one of my prize game-finds at the time), Omega World, and even Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Working on an edition of Gamma World is still on my "bucket-list" although, as the number of editions proliferates, it seems to become less likely.
So, needless to say, years down the road when Chris Pramas suggested calling the new superhero RPG I was designing "Mutants & Masterminds" I thought it was a terrific idea!
One thing I took away from my Gamma World experience was just how fun just randomly "rolling up" a character can be. It was a pastime unto itself when I first got the game. A random and unexpected set of options can really stimulate the imagination when it comes to create unique characters you might not have thought of just sitting down to a blank sheet of paper. While Mutants & Masterminds takes more of a "building" approach, I was thrilled when Jon Leitheusser and Leon Chang brought random character creation into the game with the masterful set of tables in the M&M Gamemaster's Kit for the third edition. (I think my early Gamma World experiences also left me with a fondness for genre mash-ups like Shadowrun and Torg, but that's neither here nor there.)
So don't forget to give the mutant freaks a show of appreciation from time to time. If it weren't for them, and hours of rolling to get the choicest possible sets of mutations, games like Mutants & Masterminds might not even exist!
(Speaking of the Gamma World legacy, check out the super-cool seventh edition from Wizards of the Coast and consider supporting the new edition of Metamorphosis Alpha from Gamma World co-creator Jim Ward on Kickstarter.
— Steve Kenson
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There is more to these powers than meets the eye. Who needs control over forces or matter when you can control perception itself? With Illusion Powers, make yourself unseen and unheard, or create a false image for your foes to waste their attacks upon. Twist the environment to appear any way that you want, and allow your foes to defeat themselves once they can no longer trust what they see, hear, or feel. Nothing is what it seems with the power of illusion! For M&M Third Edition.
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