Saturday, June 25, 2016

Books read in 2016: No. 26 -- Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Hero's Handbook

by Steve Kenson and Green Ronin Publishing

Started: June 14
Finished: June 25

Notes: I've been reading both super hero comics and role-playing game books of late, so why not combine them? Here I've got the main rulebook for one of today's most popular super hero role playing games. Who knows? Maybe I'll even get a chance to play, or I could run some games myself.

Mini review: I don't think I'll be playing this one. Oh, if somebody offered, I might give it a shot, but my feeling is that this game is more complex than I want. It's not the most complicated tabletop RPG I've ever run across, but it is more complicated than where my current interests lie. Some of the complexity is simply due to this being a super hero game, which means it has to cover pretty much every genre, but still there are far more little details than I care to have to worry about at a gaming table. Also, while the overall graphics and design of this book was top quality, I did feel the general layout suffered quite a bit; there were too many rules and powers, etc., brought up before any explanation, and most times the explanations were way in the back of the book somewhere. I almost felt as if I'd started reading from the end of the book then I would have understood things more. Still, I can see how many would be drawn to this game because it is at heart a D20 game, but I think I'm past my D20 days and seek something more streamlined. I'm interested in playing a super hero RPG, but I'll have to keep looking or fall back on an old standard like the Marvel FASERIP RPG from back in the 1980s.

1 comment:

Charles Gramlich said...

I'd definitely be looking for simple. I even procrastinate on doing the harder bits of my Skyrim video game