I heard of stories of People playing Mutants and Masterminds RPG (M&M for now own) but never played it myself. We have been playing a 2001 Marvel Universe system or BESM if we need a superhero kick. I am excited to try out the SotM RPG when it comes out. But on topic.
I read over the quick start rules and find it to be OK. My issue is the d20. I am not fond of a d20 for the random number generator, (everyone calm down let's not talk about dice outside the scope of this game.) but does it work in this game. I need to look into character creator as well.
For those who have played it What is the good things about it, bad thing. Tell stories. Get me excited about at lease support the RPG part of the Kickstarter.
"A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet." - Star
You'll have to forgive me, because it's been over a decade since I played any P&P RPG...
That said, I was introduced to the D20 system via D&D 3rd ed, and I always found I liked it. (Maybe because I was introduced to 3rd ed after having played enough 2nd ed to be completely fed up with it...) It definitely works with M&M, and the superhero powers system is different enough from the fantasy that it really isn't just "Dungeons and Dragons with superheroes". If nothing else, I have no memories of being stifled by the game mechanics.
I also don't recall many of the games I was in, save some bits of the first, and now I am going to ramble some, so feel free to move on with your life if you've read this far. :V
My first Mutants and Masterminds character was The Pangolin, a kid with no powers who finds a metal jacket while dumpster-diving. When he puts it on, it expands to become a suit of armor that is, yes, pangolin-shaped. He teams up with a bunch of other superheroes (I wish I could remember who they were! There was definitely a sword-wielding woman named Red...) and they fight crime in the New England sister city of Freedom City, whose name I also forget.
I tell you, I did not appreciate what my GM did for us. (I was young, and dumb.) He ran game sessions as "issues" and we would have special editions now and then. He created an entire backstory for the Pangolin that I'd never even conceived of: a nemesis named something like Dr. Zoopopolis, whose thing was making robots and stuff shaped like animals. We had to fight a bunch of dudes in power suits similar to the Pangolin's at one point, even! But the one session that really stands out in my mind was the Thanksgiving special, when the city was under attack by a giant turkey robot that shot ice beams out of its mouth. Its name was Cold Turkey. Dr. Zoopopolis was a weird, weird guy.
One of the cooler things, I think, about M&M is you can add new powers as your character evolves, not just upgrade the ones you start with. As Justin, the Pangolin's alter ego, grew and fought, he started manifesting a technopathy ability, on account of his dad was secretly a powered superhero (backstory I did conceive of!) During a climactic battle with some kind of world-ending entity (I think), I got hit with an energy blast that would have killed my character. So the GM did what any good GM does: improvise.
The Pangolin's armor, which had been shown as sentient even before he was able to interface with it directly, leaps off of his body, sacrificing itself to save him from the blast. It was an epic moment; the Pangolin died, but Justin lived, and would go on to take up an NPC support role to the team as Interface, something of a Barbara Gordon character. I replaced him with a hero named Obsidian Jade who was considerably less interesting, so we'll stop there.
If there's one thing that's hard about selling the SOEP Kickstarter to folks unfamiliar with the RPG is that, well, it's an RPG. You don't have to use any of the preexisting characters or settings in the source books, and my games never did. So other than reading through their character stats as examples of what you can do with the system, I really am completely unfamiliar with the heroes, villains and environments we're going to be getting. (Minus Dr. Metropolis; he's absolutely the most memorable part of the setting!) But I'm still excited. :B
I went from "I have no interest in this" to "I am probably buying this" just from finding out who Dr. Metropolis is.
I read that glossary of characters someone linked to elsewhere (on this forum? on another? I have no idea) which reminded me of one more thing.
Rant and Rave, the twins (?) whose powers were sonic and illusions, respectively, were the first powered super-criminals we fought. It was a simple bank robbery kind of thing; we stopped them. They showed up one or two more times, as I recall. In the final encounter, or maybe something unrelated, Rant ended up dying, which completely broke his sister. She was confined to an asylum or jail or something, and the party decided it was our responsibility to see that she got the care she needed. I'm pretty sure we ended up reforming her! She might've even become something of a sidekick, I'm not sure.
Just an example of the kinds of stories you can tell. :)