About Mutants & Masterminds

The World’s Greatest Superhero Roleplaying Game explained!

What is Mutants & Masterminds?

Mutants & Masterminds, or M&M for short, is an adventure roleplaying game in which you, the players, take on the roles of fictional superheroes having thrilling adventures in an imaginary world. One player, the Gamemaster, takes on the job of creating that world and the stories for the other players to take part in.

Together, you create your own tales of heroic action and adventure, like your favorite superhero comic books, television shows, or movies. You don’t need any expensive computers or video game systems to take part though. You just need a books, some friends, and plenty of imagination.

The best part about adventure roleplaying is you are in control of the action! Literally anything you can imagine is possible, because you control the story.

M&M is the latest in generations of adventure roleplaying games that have been around since the 1970s. How is it different? Well, Mutants & Masterminds is…

Familiar!

Thanks to something called the Open Game License, Mutants & Masterminds is based on the world’s most popular roleplaying game system, giving it many elements familiar to fans and players of that and other similar systems.

This familiarity lets you tap into a bigger audience of players. Even if they haven’t played M&M before, odds are they already know the basics! If roleplaying is new to you, that’s okay too. Mutants & Masterminds gives you everything you need to get started in a rewarding and enjoyable new hobby.

Flexible!

Mutants & Masterminds uses a point-based character creation system that lets you make the superhero character you want to play! With its options for skills, advantages, and powers, you can mix-and-match any type of ability, and create virtually any sort of power. There’s no character M&M can’t handle!

For players looking to jump right into the game, there are also hero archetypes, ready-to-play characters. Just give one a name and a secret origin and you can start playing the game immediately! The Deluxe Hero’s Handbook also features a Quick-Start Character Generator that lets you create a hero from scratch in minutes with just a few die rolls.

Fast!

Where M&M shines is in using the essential elements of adventure roleplaying, while streamlining them to make game-play fast and easy.

All the action is based around a single core mechanic: roll a twenty-sided die, add (or subtract) a modifier, and compare the result to a pre-determined difficulty number; that’s it! It serves as the basis for everything in the M&M system; no need for other dice or types of die rolls, no point counting or multiplying or dividing.

Mutants & Masterminds even does away with point accounting during play: no keeping track of hit points, spell points, fatigue points, and so forth. Instead it uses various conditions to describe exactly what’s happening in the game quickly and easily; so you can say your character is “bruised” or “staggered” rather than “down 11 hit points” or “exhausted” rather than “only having 4 fatigue points left.”

Fans who have played M&M say it runs as fast as a comic book story should, without the game rules getting in the way of the fun, which brings us to its most important quality…

Fun!

M&M is designed by adventure roleplayers for adventure roleplayers. It’s meant to be the most fun with the least work, offering flexibility and choice without bogging down in unnecessary detail or rules. It gives you the tools to have exciting adventures and then gets out of your way to let you do it.

To further enhance the fun you can have with Mutants & Masterminds, Green Ronin has partnered with other game publishers in the Super-Powered by M&M Trademark License, allowing them to produce support material like adventures, sourcebooks, and more, so you can be assured of having everything you need for your superheroic adventures.