Green Ronin Designer Spotlight

Designer Spotlight: Steve Kenson (Mutants & Masterminds)

Third in our Designer Spotlight series here on greenronin.com, we have an interview with Steve Kenson. Steve is the designer of Mutants & Masterminds, along with The Shaman's Handbook and The Witch's Handbook in our d20 Master Class series. His Master Class series books are now available. Look for Mutants & Masterminds this November. 

GR: So tell us about Mutants & Masterminds.

Steve: I thought you'd never ask!

Mutants & Masterminds (or M&M, as it's affectionately known) is a superhero roleplaying game. It takes advantage of the Open Game License, so that players already familiar with RPGs like D&D and Star Wars can get into the game quickly and easily, but the rules have been customized to fit the superhero genre and to make M&M fast and easy to play.

GR: Customized how? Can you give us some examples?

Steve: One prime example is how Mutants & Masterminds handles damage. Superheroes toss around some pretty powerful attacks and can soak up a lot of damage. In the traditional hit points system, that means rolling a lot of dice every time a hero or villain connects in combat and that seemed too slow for superheroes.

So in Mutants & Masterminds instead of rolling X dice of damage, each attack has a "damage bonus" that the target of the attack makes a saving throw against. The result of the saving throw determines what kind of damage they take: a successful save means no damage, while a failed save means they're hurt. How much depends on how badly they failed the saving throw. A really low save (or a really high damage bonus) can result in an instant knockout.

An added benefit is that you only need a single d20 to play Mutants & Masterminds because everything, from attack and damage rolls to skill and power checks, uses the same basic system.

GR: What about players who like using hit points?

Steve: Not a problem. A number of playtesters preferred using hit points for their own games, so we include guidelines on how to put them back into the game, if that's what you want. It's easy to do and doesn't change any of the other rules in the game. There are a lot of sidebars with optional rules and notes on how to change the rules around to suit your own style of play, mainly because that's the sort of thing I like from an RPG: the option to customize.

GR: What other changes does Mutants & Masterminds feature?

Steve: Most of the other "changes" are really additions, things you didn't have in the rules before. For example, there are complete rules for super-powers, including a system for designing your own powers and modifying the existing ones in lots of different ways. There are new skills and feats suited to the superhero genre, including feats that affect how powers work.

There are also a few subtractions, classes and races, for example. There are no character classes in Mutants & Masterminds simply because too many superheroes don't fit into an easy classification and players like to come up with unique super-powers and characters. There aren't any races (or pseudo-races, like "backgrounds" or "origins") so a character's origin and background can be as individual and unique as possible. We set things up to encourage that, by letting players create whatever they want, within certain limits set by the GM.

GR: Sounds like you really want to encourage creativity.

Steve: Absolutely! Like I said, I'm a big fan of options and customization in my games, so I wanted Mutants & Masterminds players and gamemasters to have all of the options that I would want, while giving them a framework to play around in.

GR: What was the biggest challenge of designing a superhero game using the Open Game License?

Steve: Mainly coming up with ways to strike a balance between flexibility and a wide range of powers and playability. I wanted a game that could handle any superhero character (hero or villain) but that played fairly quickly and smoothly. I think that M&M is comprehensive and able to handle a wide range of different kinds of superhero games, but simple enough that its easy to learn and use, especially for players already familiar with the ins and outs of D&D.

GR: Does Mutants & Masterminds have a default setting?

Steve: No. The core Mutants & Masterminds rulebook is designed to handle any kind of superhero (or super-powered) game, so we didn't want to limit it to a single setting or style. You can do four-color comics, grim and gritty stuff, post-modern people-with-powers, whatever you want. One playtester even used it to run a fantasy game! My experience is that most people who play superhero RPGs like to create their own settings and characters. That's a big part of the fun, and I want to encourage that, so the M&M rulebook focuses on giving players and GMs the tools they need to create their own settings.

That said, I am doing a setting sourcebook for Green Ronin called Freedom City. It will be the first Mutants & Masterminds setting and can serve as an example of how to create your own or as a setting for those players who don't want to create their own. It's a fully detailed four-color superhero city, complete with an extensive history, lots of superheroes and villains, supporting characters, and tons of adventure hooks. It's going to be about the same size as the Mutants & Masterminds rulebook itself, so there's a lot of stuff in there.

The other thing about Freedom City is that it will be useful for people who don't even play Mutants & Masterminds. They can still take the locations, characters, heroes, villains, plot hooks, and so forth and use them for whatever superhero game they're playing. Much like Green Ronin's Freeport series of adventures and the Freeport: City of Adventure book, you'll be able to drop Freedom City into your own campaign pretty much anywhere you want and use it in a variety of different ways.

The introductory adventure in the back of Mutants & Masterminds is set in Freedom City (although that's easy to change or ignore, if you want to). It gives players a brief intro to the city and some of its important characters.

GR: When are Mutants & Masterminds and Freedom City going to be available?

Steve: Mutants & Masterminds is out in November, followed by Freedom City in January. After that comes the GM Screen and then the Time of Crisis adventure book (set in Freedom City), written by Christopher McGlothlin.

GR: What is your gaming background? What are some of your favorite games?

Steve: I've been playing RPGs for... wow, just over twenty years now, since I was around 12 years old. The first RPG I ever played was the old gray box edition of Gamma World.

My first professional writing credit was a bit in the second edition of The Grimoire for Shadowrun. I started working as a fulltime freelancer in the industry in 1995. Since then I've written or contributed to over fifty different books for at least a dozen different game lines, including a number of superhero RPGs like Champions, Aberrant, the Marvel-Super Heroes Adventure Game, and Silver Age Sentinels, in addition to Mutants & Masterminds.

My favorite RPGs are primarily superhero games, although I also like a lot of variety in my gaming diet. Probably one of the reasons I like superhero games so much is that practically anything can happen. Characters can fight crime in one adventure, go into outer space and meet aliens in the next, then venture into the undersea ruins of Atlantis, travel through time, and meet up with deities, all in the same setting!

GR: You must be a comic book fan, then.

Steve: Oh, yeah! I was an avid comic book reader a couple years before I was a gamer. I've been collecting comics since I was about 10 years old and I've got a basement full of boxes and a lot of great stories to show for it. I love all sorts of comics and I wanted Mutants & Masterminds to be able to reproduce some of the enjoyment I've gotten out of reading comics over the years.

Comic books are such an intensely visual medium that I'm really glad Green Ronin got Sean Glenn to do the art direction for the book. Folks should be familiar with Sean's work from the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. He's really taken the ball and run with it. Mutants & Masterminds is a stunning book: hardcover, full-color, and lots of artwork by real comic book artists.

GR: So who's your favorite superhero? Favorite supervillain?

Steve: That's tough. There are so many. When it comes to heroes I tend to like team comics, like Avengers, JLA, and X-Men, with lots of different characters to interact. I was a big fan of the Teen Titans back in the day. I love Phil Jiminez's interpretation of Wonder Woman these days (the best the book has been in years). Other recent favorites include Busiek and Perez on Avengers, Morrison and Porter on JLA, and Ellis, Hitch, and Neary on The Authority. Oh, and the Justice League show on Cartoon Network rocks!

Villains are easier. I like smart master-villains with a noble streak in them. Doctor Doom is probably my favorite all-time supervillain (when he's written well). I also like Magneto and Lex Luthor. Of course, there's a lot to be said for a villain who's just out-and-out evil, too. Ultron is one of my favorites in that category.

GR: Where’s the best place to learn more about M&M?

Steve: Right now, this very website. Start by downloading the introductory flier and other samples from the product page. The flier provides you with two sample characters (a hero and a villain) and the basic rules you need to run a fight between them. There are also samples of different parts of the book. If you like what you see, check out the rulebook to see it all laid out in detail and full, glorious color.

I'd also invite folks to drop by the Green Ronin discussion forums. There's a very active Mutants & Masterminds board there, where I'm sure you can get any questions about the game answered. Members of the Green Ronin and Super Unicorn design teams and I all frequent the forums as well.

GR: If you could have super-powers, what would they be?

Steve: I'd have Steve "Writes" Long's power to write stuff really fast.

My favorite super-power of all time has always been Green Lantern's power ring, so I'd probably be a Green Lantern, given the opportunity. (Guardians of the Universe recruiting offices, take note!)