Both games have the same mechanical system and are fully compatible. In the previous year Green Ronin Publishing had released another superhero role-playing game, DC Adventures. The first edition of M&M books featured graphic design and art direction by the design studio Super Unicorn, but other firms provide the artwork on all subsequent releases.Ī second edition of the Mutants & Masterminds system debuted at Gen Con in 2005 and saw wide release in October of that year.Ī third edition of Mutants & Masterminds was released in 2011 and it has also been translated to Italian by Kaizoku Press. Mutants & Masterminds was published in 2002 the setting, which was once known as Century City, became Freedom City was published in 2003. Presenting a complete game was seen as taking precedence over having a d20 logo on the product, so the decision was made to use the OGL without the d20 license. Releasing the game under the d20 Standard Trademark License, as originally planned, would have prohibited the inclusion of ability generation and character advancement rules. Over time, it became clear to him that the game would need to be released only under the Open Game License. Pramas made the offer to publish the setting if Kenson would also create a superhero game system based on the d20 System. Shopping it around to various publishers, none were interested (superhero game popularity had declined at that time) until he talked to Chris Pramas (President of Green Ronin Publishing) about the setting. Through a series of misfortunes, the project fell through and he was left with a partially completed manuscript.
There are a lot of characters here that will give players a good look at how to create some interesting abilities, and will also help GMs with letting players interact with the DC Universe.In the late 1990s, Steve Kenson had an idea for a superhero setting that he had been contracted to produce. Personally, I will pony up the money - I like to support any efforts to create RPGs based on existing comic book universes. The price point is a little high - $49.95 for the print version (from Green Ronin - Amazon is selling it for much less). There is also a good cross section of villains, and team entries. I'm quite pleased to see that they have included multiple version of characters where applicable (including Golden Age versions of these heroes) for instance, all three versions of Batgirl are present in the book, as well as entries for the Blue and Indigo Lantern Corps.
They have also put a PDF preview up on their site, showing this book will cover from Abra Kadabra to Kobra & the Kobra Cult. I think everyone expected them out a little sooner than they have been, but they are now taking pre-orders. There have been challenges in getting these out. The books are named, cleverly enough Heroes & Villains Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Green Ronin has the license to create two books of characters from the DC Universe.