Idle Thoughts on Idol Pursuits (Ronin Roundtable)

The shared world experience is an interesting one, something my earliest experiences with roleplaying games informed me about. After all, I started out playing around in imaginary worlds created by others, first as a hobby and later as a professional writer, so it’s a natural progression that now, other people are playing around in imaginary worlds that I created. One of the important things about shared worlds is that they’re like living things: They grow and change over time and, while you might help to create one, or even “raise” it, ultimately, it doesn’t belong to you and it can be better from a lot of different contributions.

Idol Pursuits, the Mutants & Masterminds novella from Nisaba Press, written by Michael Matheson, is an example of how those diverse shared-world contributions come together. Like the upcoming NetherWar adventure series for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG, the story of Idol Pursuits has its origins in the update of the Freedom City sourcebook (itself the origin of the Earth-Prime setting) to the third edition of the M&M rules.

One of the background elements that was updated in Freedom City is a change in the forces of magic in the world: The loss of Adrian Eldritch as Master Mage, followed by his successor Seven inadvertently becoming ruler of the Netherworld, forced to exile herself from Earth. Now sinister forces of sorcery that were once under control are rising in power. One strand of that story is told in NetherWar (NetherWar: Master of Earth is on sale NOW!), while others appear in M&M fiction like Idol Pursuits and the forthcoming novel The Doom That Came to San Francisco.

When there’s magic at work in the world of Earth-Prime, you can bet things are going to happen in Mystery, New Hampshire, a mystic part of the setting I first detailed in Altas of Earth-Prime, which is also the setting for Idol Pursuits. Just the place where you might expect a deathless vigilante dealing out harsh justice might come across a strange idol that everyone seems to want, and team up with a young sorcerer-detective and his sword-wielding barbarian protector. For me, it’s a fun experience to see Matheson’s Revenant, Kid Necro, and Ilkath, among others, meet up with some familiar Freedom City characters of my creation, mixed with other contributions to Earth-Prime like Scott Bennie’s specialists in magic and weirdness from Agents of Freedom, and some of Prof. Christopher McGlothlin’s creepy characters from Freedom’s Most Wanted, to name a few.

Intrigued? Well, no spoilers here, but if you’re interested in magic and misadventure in the Mutants & Masterminds manner, and maybe getting another perspective on the Rise of Dark Magic in the Earth-Prime setting, take a look at Idol Pursuits, the ebook and pdf are available today from Nisaba Press!

Mutants & Masterminds: NetherWar is Coming… (Ronin Roundtable)

So what good’s an adventure if the story doesn’t roll on into the next one? What good is winning the battle while the war rages on? And how can real heroes keep the world safe when the position of the world’s guardian remains empty?

The NetherWar is upon us, to answer these questions.

NetherWar is a six-part adventure series for Mutants & Masterminds—five main stories and a prequel—that pits the heroes against the rising tide of evil magic on Earth Prime. The champions must prove their mettle by defending the world from newly-empowered villains and uncovering the legacy of protection Adrian Eldrich created before his terrible death. But they’re racing the clock as a diabolical shadow from the Master Mage’s past works to unravel those protections and rise on Earth-Prime as a dark god!

Over the coming months, you’ll run through the harrowing challenges and ultimately save Earth-Prime. The adventure begins with a flashback in this week’s Master of Earth, written by me, then continues next month with John Polojac’s Assault on the Nerian Nexus. The months to come will unveil The Pentagram Peril, Broken Strings, Bound by Gold, and finally conclude in Three Made One. There’s plenty of space in between each adventure to add your own adventures and plot points, or you can run the entire series back-to-back as an extended mini campaign, and each volume of the NetherWar arc will work as a standalone adventure if you only want little a magical peril. As a treat.

No Spells Required!

You can run the NetherWar adventure arc using your existing heroes, or build a new team to tackle the crisis, but magical powers aren’t necessary to save the world from the magic apocalypse. There are plenty of expert NPCs along the way to explain the magical history of Earth-Prime and plenty of ways to solve the various challenges without resorting to spellcraft, so feel free to bring your mutants, aliens, and cyborgs into the fight!

If you do want to use NetherWar as the kickoff for a magical campaign, NetherWar offers Bequests in each adventure—tiny bits of Adrian Eldrich’s legacy as Master Mage left behind for others to inherit. Your heroes can keep bequests in their trophy case as plot devices they can pull out for a Hero Point, or invest the Power points to make any bequest a normal part of their heroic identity. And the greatest bequest of all is up for grabs: The title of Master Mage of Earth-Prime! While bequests and the title aren’t central to the campaign, they provide a little something extra for players who get into the themes and legacies involved.

A Blast in the Past

With the Time Traveler’s Codex  available now, it’s appropriate that the NetherWar kicks off with a little trip to yesteryear in Master of Earth. A slight departure from our usual Astonishing Adventure offerings, Master of Earth flashes back to events we already describe in the Secret Past chapter of Freedom City, Third Edition and further details Seven’s climactic confrontation with the Dark Lord Una to save the earth after Eldrich’s passing. The players step into the roles of Seven and several members of the teenage Next-Gen to stop Una the Unrelenting from conquering Earth-Prime! You can play the adventure as a slice of history with the same outcome, or use the adventure with your own heroes to create your own spin on Earth-Prime’s recent past. While the heroes of Master of Earth—are set years in the past—don’t necessarily tie directly into those you might play, the adventure with help players understand the status quo of Earth-Prime’s magical community and how we got here.

Your Guide to Adventure!

 

NetherWar has a lot of moving parts and expectations, not to mention six parts stretched out over as many months. To help players and Gamemasters alike keep track of all those moving parts, we’ve assembled a FREE NetherWar Guide. This 15-page guide gives players the rundown on what they need to know and expect going into NetherWar as well as advice on what skills, Advantages, and powers might be helpful. If you’re building your team from scratch for this adventure series, it also offers five team ideas and five concept roles to help you define your place in the group. You can build your teams only using these concept roles, or combine them with roles presented in the SuperTeam Handbook to flesh out your place on the team and the story.

For Gamemasters, the NetherWar Guide also includes a section just for you! It includes an adventure-by-adventure preview of what to expect so you can start early seeding any plot points you really like. It also includes a brief who’s-who of NetherWar villains so you can read up on their history and start perfecting your voice-acting skills for the table!

 

If you’re worried about magical mayhem overload, don’t fret! We’ll have plenty of Astonishing Adventures to come that offer some mystical relief! Take off to the stars, battle aliens, and stop a supernova in the cosmic adventure Prodigal Sun, or take your campaign back to high school for a LARP gone terrible wrong in Bite Club, or confront a mischievous cosmic imp as you journey Into the Idiot Box! All these and more lie in the future!

The NetherWar has been a really fun project to bring to life, and I hope everyone has as much fun playing it. Hopefully this will be the first of many multi-part adventures yet to come for Mutants & Masterminds, so let us know what you think on social media and the Ronin Army forums!

Mutants & Masterminds: IT’S ABOUT TIME…(Ronin Roundtable)

Alright, so Green Ronin has released the Time Traveler’s Codex for Mutants & Masterminds, and we’re all interested. Time travel is a big deal, but you look at this development and you think “What has this got to do with me? Surely time travel and Green Ronin are in the pocket of Big Chronomancy. How can I possibly make time travel work for me, the little guy running a hand-to-mouth wooly mammoth ranch?”

Well I’m glad you asked, friend, because the Time Traveler’s Codex has so much to offer you! It’s got advice and skills to help you survive down the timestream, with not one, not two, but THREE brand new optional skills to help bring history to life! Pair those with new advantages designed especially with the worldly time traveler in mind and you’ll never feel out of place even when you’re out of your era!

“But every book has skills,” you say…

You, the discerning player have your eyes open for value! As a wary consumer, you know that companies aim so much at Gamemasters and their deep, tearstained pockets. You say “Well the Time Traveler’s Codex gives my Gamemaster everything she needs to attack me with a cyborg and a sabre-tooth tiger at the same time! How do I stand up against that?”

With time powers, my friend, with time powers. While the indelible Power Profiles offers you an in-depth look at temporal powers, this handy volume introduces new uses like Time Tampering and every 90s kid favorite, Time Out!

“But Crystal”, you say, interrupting again. “I was never bitten by a radioactive sundial! I have no powers to call my own!” Lucky for you, this stark tome provides a veritable catalog of new equipment with which to kit out your character! And the list doesn’t just start with our top-of-the-line time machines (including the Time-Hopping Muscle Car; tell Sal I sent you to get a sweet, sweet discount and no money down), but indispensable tools of the time-traveling trade like the Chronal Scanner and the emergency Time Suit! Defend yourself with an array of time-traveling weapons, whether you’re freezing them in place with the patent-pending Chronal Sink or wiping out the past, present, and future of your obnoxious neighbor with the still-technically-legal Quantum Disruptor! And that’s before we open the back of the book and start exploring vintage innovations from Earth’s history. No extra charge for that; it’s a feature.

I can see it in your eyes: You’re on the fence, but still you wonder, Is. It. For. Me? Canny, friend. You’re canny and I like that, so here’s what I’m gonna do. Now don’t spread this around, because I could lose my job for what I’m about to tell you, but every single element of this book intended for Gamemaster use is available to you, the consumer! Certainly your Gamemaster can unleash a horde of flesh-devouring cockroaches from beyond the end of time, but with time travel on your side you can have that self-same horde as a loyal and colorful sidekick! Crack wise with a loyal Dread Pirate or have an Egyptian Sphinx prepare your eggs in the morning; it’s doesn’t matter, they’re you’re sidekick!

Now how much would you pay?

Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna send you home—at no charge to you—with a hot sample to get you excited. One of the pre-made hero archetypes open to you: the Quantum Alien! Yes, that scion of an advanced race, whose very marrow is infused with the stuff of time travel itself! If this isn’t proof that your household is ready for time travel, then dear reader, you might as well stay in the 20th century!

Mutants & Masterminds: TIME FOR TIME! (Ronin Roundtable)

Time Traveler’s Codex is now available in PDF format in our Green Ronin Online Store.

When you think about your favorite superhero teams—the Justice League, the X-men, the Ninja Turtles, the Sailor Senshi—what do they all have in common? It’s not masks or tights or even tragic backstories. None of those are universal.

No, to be real superheroes, you need to Travel. Through. Time.

Superheroes have flung themselves through the fourth dimension almost as long as comics have published their misadventures. The Fantastic Four were time-traveling by issue #5, and the entire Legion of Superheroes was kicked-off thanks to a one-off time travel story in the pages of Superboy. Even the world of cinema can’t resist the siren song of chronomancy, as (spoiler warning) the Avengers build a time machine to repair their scarred universe.

So where has the time travel for Mutants & Masterminds been? Right here.

Mutants & Masterminds Time Traveler's Codex PDF

Buy the Time Traveler’s Codex PDF today! (Even if you already bought it tomorrow.)

Time travel opens up so many new options for a superhero campaign, from the simple elegance of punching dinosaurs to the deep, characterful questions about their responsibilities and consequences for tampering in history. The Time Traveler’s Codex, which releases this week, gives you a smorgasbord of options for incorporating time travel as a side element or a major theme in your campaigns, including details on various eras of adventure popular in other time travel stories, new equipment and powers that revolve around controlling an traveling through time, a look at the tropes and themes that pop up around time travel, and plenty of advice for understanding how time travel works and determining the effects of your heroes’ actions.

There will be plenty of previews to come for this book, but for now here’s a look at the table of contents, so you know exactly what you’re in for!

I’ll see you… in time.

Mutants & Masterminds: Reign, Reign, Go Away

Between last month’s new offering Rise of the Tyrant, and this week’s own The Reign of Cats and Dogs, the all new lineup of Astonishing Adventures is in full swing, with superhero action and adventure for your Mutants & Masterminds table. Rise of the Tyrant brought a sinister plot by an extradimensional warlord, using the puzzle-loving villain Conundrum as his pawn. Despite the high stakes, the encounters introduce new concepts one at a time, from combat to skill checks to investigations, making Rise of the Tyrant a great introduction to M&M for new players or players new to Third Edition.

The Reign of Cats and Dogs is about as far, conceptually, from interdimensional conquest as we can get. The heroes must keep the peace and find a solution as the city’s animals begin developing super powers in one of the weirdest adventures we’ve ever offered for any edition of Mutants & Masterminds, making the adventure a fun fit for any superhero team, but especially appropriate for Hero High teens hoping to keep things calm.

But this isn’t the first appearance of The Reign of Cats and Dogs. The adventure began years ago as a homebrew convention game I ran for various events and based entirely off a bade pun from my good friend, author and DJ, Miranda Sparks. When I was double-booked during one GenCon event, I needed Green Ronin to send a relief GM halfway through my game: None other than Steve Kenson, who managed to pick up my notes with no prep time and run with them. He later admitted that reviewing my adventure notes for that game are part of what convinced him I would make a good fit for the Green Ronin team and M&M in particular, so The Reign of Cats And Dogs is actually responsible for my current position as head of my favorite game line!

We have plenty more Astonishing Adventures lined up over the next several months to keep you entertained and the city safe, running the gambit from wacky fun to deadly serious confrontations between good and evil! I don’t know if this bizarre escapade will bring you the same good fortune it’s brought me, but I know it’ll at least bring you a few hours of goofy fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much as my convention tables have!

HEED THE CALL TO ADVENTURE! (Ronin Roundtable)

Brave heroes stand up to stop super-powered opponents whose abilities place them beyond the reach of most law enforcement. But what’s the villains plot? How do they lay the groundwork? And how do they react once a band of meddling kids starts sniffing around their scheme? It’s not a secret that Mutants & Masterminds is a fun system but lacks much adventure support. Groups are still playing our introduction to 3e, Emerald City Knights a decade after its release because we’ve been falling down on providing more adventures for you.

One of the reasons Green Ronin asked me aboard to develop Mutants & Masterminds is for my experience developing fun adventures. And while a lot of my attention has gone into delivering on all the outstanding projects and sewing my costume for the last few years, we’ve all been tinkering away in the background to solve the greatest of M&M challenges: adventure!

 

Welcome to Astonishing Adventures

Astonishing Adventures is a new monthly PDF series of superhero adventures, written by some of the best minds in the RPG industry today, like Steve Kenson, John Polojac, Lyz Liddell, Amber Scott, and many more. Each adventure includes everything you need to play, including some suggestions for how to bring your superheroes into the excitement, how it might tie in to Earth-Prime, suggestions for expanding the adventure if you want more than just one or two nights’ entertainment, and all the statblocks you need, generally clocking in around 15-20 pages of excitement.

We’ve also played around with the statblock presentation so GMs can find the information they need at a glance, with a compact summary whenever a combatant is mentioned in the running text and more details in each adventure’s Cast section. As both a graphic design and a GM, I’m pretty happy with that development.

 

 

While most of the Astonishing Adventures will be designed with standard PL 10 “cape and cowl” heroes in mind, we’ll also be releasing support for cosmic teams, hero high adventures, and more as time goes on.

Our first round of releases drop next week. You’ll be seeing the urban adventure Power Play and the assault on a volcano fortress that is The Island of Dr. Sersei, the two new adventures included in the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, letting you run the adventures even if you still keep your original Gamemaster’s Guide! February will see Rise of the Tyrant as well as the lighthearted Reign of Cats and Dogs, and every month after will see the release of one or two new adventures. We’ve got text and art orders ready to carry us for the next 12 months, so let’s make 2020, and our own 20th Anniversary, the year of adventure!

 

Q&A

Are you going to be releasing Astonishing Adventures in print?

Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition has produced several books from regular PDF series in the past, but we’re not currently planning to release any of these adventures in print. If there’s a lot of fan demand that might change, but for the time being, they’re PDF exclusive.

Will there be two adventures every month?

We plan to alternate. Some months will release a single adventure and other months will have two.

Will you make an Astonishing Adventure around my favorite M&M villain?

I don’t know. Hopefully. There are a lot of great Mutants & Masterminds villains, so I don’t know that we’ll get to all of them, but we’ll try to provide a good mix of classic fan favorite and new or niche weirdoes. Conundrum, Cerebrus Rex, and Medea are all coming soon, and even more villains are showcased in our Mutants & Masterminds fiction from Nisaba Press.

How much will each Astonishing Adventure cost?

Each Astonishing Adventure is $4.99 USD, less than the price of a foot-long sub!

Are you planning to do more multi-part adventures like Emerald City Knights?

The NetherWar is brewing. Stayed tuned for more information.

Happy Holidays from Green Ronin Publishing!

Everyone at Green Ronin would like to wish you the very best this Holiday Season, and we’ll see you soon in the new year!

Green Ronin Publishing will be closed from today, December 22nd and will return on January 6th.

Roadtrip to Ruin: a new Mutants & Masterminds novel (Ronin Roundtable)

I love working on book covers. It’s not my primary skill set, but I’ve done enough now to feel vaguely competent, and I’ve gotten to work with some incredible artists, so I’ve learned a lot.

But this is the first time I’ve written “The Pomeranian is the wrong shade of green. We need him to look more radioactive.”

Thankfully, the artist, Dale Ray Deforest, took it in stride and did, indeed, make the Pomeranian a more radioactive green.

 

This book has been quite a lot of fun to work on in general. I first met Skyler in Austin, Texas, during one of the most memorable weekends of my life – I was at World Horror Convention, got the worst food poisoning of my life, was breaking up with a boyfriend, and had my first book signing for my first anthology (I did that signing half a bottle of Jack Daniels in, because it turns out whiskey can help calm food poisoning). I loved her work, and when I needed an author to write a Mutants & Masterminds novel for Nisaba, she was an immediate choice.

She had a strong concept almost immediately, and turned over a draft that had me laughing as I read it. The basic premise is a familiar one: a girl entering adulthood, trying to find her way into her new responsibilities.

In Roadtrip to Ruin, there’s nothing normal about Hannah’s life. Going to school with a rich social media celebrity, breaking people out of the hospital, trying to make friends with a demon, and embarking on a road trip to find out where she came from, that’s all just Monday for Hannah.

And yes, the dog is green.

Pick up Roadtrip to Ruin¸ a Mutants & Masterminds novel by Skyler Graye, from Nisaba Press/Green Ronin Publishing soon!

Spooky Superhero Times!

With Halloween fast approaching, this is a time for seasonal merriment, and there are few things merrier than punching self-important super villains in the face! To celebrate this spooky time of year—a favorite around the Green Ronin offices—we’ve prepared a special treat: A free adventure for Mutants & Masterminds, Third Edition!

Nothing To Fear

Nothing to Fear is a short seasonal adventure set in Freedom City. As the heroes attend the city’s annual Halloween parade, sinister agents are afoot, looking to spread fear and chaos among the attendees. Only swift action can prevent a fun-filled holiday from mutating into a night of violence. Nothing to Fear is self-contained, with the major villain stat blocks provided for you. All you need to play is a copy of the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook and either the Gamemaster’s Guide or the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide! It’s also a stealth preview of our upcoming PDF Astonishing Adventures line, coming later this year. More details on that as we get closer.

Download Nothing to Fear here!

 


And check out last year’s previous Halloween Adventurer: Monster Mash-Up!
And for more holiday fun, (even though it’s still months away, despite what the seasonal aisle in retail stores might like you to think): Crisis on Christmas!

Mutants & Masterminds: BIGGER. STRONGER. BETTER. THE DELUXE GAMEMASTER’S GUIDE

Longtime fans and frustrated newcomers alike have probably noticed that the Mutants & Masterminds Gamemaster’s Guide has been out of print for most of this year. Why retire such a critical rulebook for one of our most popular lines? Well, we didn’t. The original Gamemaster’s Guide was involved in a terrible test-pilot crash, and so we retrieved it and took it back to base, where we rebuilt it better than ever!

The Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide has all the material you love from the original but expanded with even more content and bound in a sturdy hardback to better stand up to table wear. So what’s new? Let’s take a look at the updated table of contents:

Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide Table of Contents!

That’s 70 new pages of content! Let’s take a look at part of that today!

New Faces

The Archetypes chapter has been expanded to add new villains and new minions! One of the best parts of running a superhero RPG is getting to put your favorite tropes and sacred cows into the game, and I always thought the villain archetype needed a little more weird. The new villains include the Composite—a villain made from small particles or creatures, making them flexible and tough to hurt. But my personal favorite addition is the PL 8 Jobber, the second-string loser whose powers have a theme but don’t quite match the PCs’. These are your Shockers, your Condiment Kings, your Captains Boomerang. They’re great support; backed by a ton of minions or assisting a bigger villain, they’ll make you sweat. But on their own, they don’t stand much of a chance against PL 10 heroes.

I love the Jobber so much, I want everyone to have her! So here she is for everyone to enjoy!

Free PDF Prewiew of Jobber!

The archetypes chapter also includes lots of new minions to help round out your adventure lineup. The big goal was to add some more unusual minion opponents and round out that PL7-8 “Lieutenant” range, so here’s the list of new additions: Devouring Swarm, Trickster Faerie, Jinx Faerie, Arcane Cultist, Mystic Ninja, Drone, Robot Jockey, Tulpa, and my personal favorite and noteworthy missing pet: the Hyena. The Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide also includes a new section just for templates, with seven sample templates to let you adapt the preceding minions for your own stranger capers.

Great Power, Great Responsibility

Part of being a superhero means being responsible in both deed and language. Words can have power, carry unexpected baggage, or be hurtful, and even when you don’t mean to cause harm, they can still have consequence. The original printing of the Gamemaster’s Guide included some word choices that are common comic book tropes, but also carry some real-world baggage. So we’ve changed a few names in the archetype chapter. These revisions use the same statblocks, but the shift can be confusing if you’re using adventures or villain write-ups that refer to these minions by name, so here’s the rundown on what got changed:

The Savage villain archetype is now the Hybrid.

The Thug is now the Crook.

The Hit-Man is now the Hired Killer.

And the minion-level Crime Lord is now the Boss. This wasn’t a sensitivity issue; we’re just trying to avoid confusion with the villain archetype of the same name.