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Rishi A.
United States
Alexandria
Virginia
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So I am currently running a short campaign of Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition). Last night's session was not fun, and I was discussing possible improvements with the players. Much to my surprise, except for one player, none of them were having fun with the campaign. Now, there were a lot of individual opinions factoring in here, but I think I need to break down exactly what went wrong. It's really a huge combination of factors.
I am going to be somewhat careful about what I say here in case some of my players are reading. It is one of the reasons that I'm not going to provide many specific examples.
Lack of Backstory
Although there are a couple of well-conceived characters, most of them lacked an interesting and complicated backstory. Part of the problem is that we're coming off the heels of a very plot-driven Dungeons & Dragons (4th Edition) campaign, where less emphasis was placed on character development. I think that some players have gotten lazy about it and others just aren't interested in developing their characters in terms of personality and backstory. In addition, I blame things on a rather poor decision on my part: to allow players to rotate in between multiple characters. My intent was to give room for guest stars and for people to explore myriad superhero tropes, but the effect was that people didn't think their characters through. Finally, there was a distinct lack of setting. I was hoping to set things in the default M&M 3E setting (Emerald City), but the sourcebook got pushed back to next year. I decided to place things in the real world, but I wasn't able to give the players enough of a sense on how the world has been changed by the appearance of super heroes.
The System Itself
Now I don't mean to criticize the system, but only suggesting that perhaps the system isn't right for us. Part of our problem is definitely the unfamiliarity with the system. Combats took a long time at first because we were constantly looking up rules.
But I think there are larger problems that I am having with the system. First of all, there are not a lot of tactical options. Sure, you can subtract points from your attack to add some damage and vice versa, but a lot of the maneuvers don't necessarily add any depth to the game: just complexity. The system is not robust enough to be an interesting tactical exercise in its own right. A good superhero combat needs to have a healthy sprinkle of quips and plot hooks which are difficult to insert when the players aren't interested and I'm too busy looking up rules to add a lot of flavor. But it's not rules-light enough to de-emphasize the dice rolling and make it all about narrative. M&M 3E falls in this weird hybrid area where the clunky roots from Dungeons & Dragons (3rd Edition) are showing but the system hasn't been streamlined enough to just be quick-and-dirty dice-rolling.
Secondly, combat is very swingy. For those who do not know the system, an attacker makes a roll see if the attack hits or not. If it does, the defender rolls a check to see how much damage it does (called a "toughness check"). In that toughness check, anything could happen to the defender, from completely shrugging off the damage to instantly dropping unconscious. After a few rounds, players often have figured out their most effective course of action and there's no reason for them to not repeat it every round.
Blame In the Right Place
And I realize that it's easy to blame the players and the system, but part of it is my fault. I really could have spent more time creating a world or giving the players interesting hooks. Our sessions take place on weekday evenings, and I'm often too tired and too busy from work to prepare things to the level that I need to. Also, as I mentioned above, I made poor decisions in allowing people to switch out characters and not having a well-defined setting.
What's Next?
So, this is the crux of the post. Some of the players want something rules-light and narrative-driven while others want something with a little more tactical crunch (i.e. back to D&D). It's hard to say with this group, though, because I think everyone is pulling in different directions. The only other things besides D&D and some board games that I've played with these guys is one session of Fiasco with two of the players: one of them really liked it and one really didn't. And Spirit of the Century, which various people disliked for various reasons: a couple didn't like the setting, a couple thought it was too rules-light and one person said that he thought it had too many rules (???) - and this coming from someone who plays D&D.
So I'm at a crossroads where I can't please everyone. It's a stereotype that D&D players don't transition well into other RPGs, but in this case, it's turning out to be true. No matter what direction I go in, someone is going to be unhappy. I guess the important thing is that the unhappy person is not me.
I can't force people to insert "acting" (for lack of a better term) into their play. Also, it's difficult to just scrap the group as I've known everyone in it for at least two years.
Something drastically needs to change though. When your leisure hobbies are becoming stressful, you're doing something wrong.
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