Mutants & Masterminds Above and Beyond.pdf

Above and Beyond

An M&M Superlink Supplement

for High-Powered Superheroics

Requires the Mutants & Masterminds RPG by Green Ronin Publishing for use.

Writing and layout by Colin Fredericks

Editing by Lucas Mansell

Cover Art by Trever Harwell. The picture of Earth appears courtesy of NASA.

Interior Art by Benjamin D. Richards

Created on a dual-processor Power Macintosh G4 running MacOS 10.2, using Adobe InDesign for layout and

Adobe Photoshop for backgrounds and composition. This document uses the fonts Times Roman and Papyrus.

Games. All rights are reserved. More information about Valent Games can be found at http://www.valentgames.com.

OGL content designation, and the Open Gaming License itself, can be found at the end of this book. Mutants &

Masterminds, M&M Superlink, and the M&M Superlink logo are Trademarks of Green Ronin Publishing and

are used with permission. Hero Points and Villain Points are Product Identity of Green Ronin Publishing and are

used with permission.

Above and Beyond

Introduction

What’s in Here?

Chapter One is about the lives of exceptionally

powerful supers. Who are they? What do they do?

Perhaps more important, what donʼt they do? How

do they react to ordinary people, and vice versa?

Can they afford to wait for someone to make the irst

move, or do they have to start being more “proac-

tive”? Can they retain their basic sense of humanity?

Should they even try?

Anyone with courage and initiative has it in

themselves to save their hometown. Superheroes

have the power to save a city, a state, and maybe even

their country. Some few superheroes can even ind

it in themselves to save the whole world. It is rare

indeed, however, to ind someone who can save the

entire universe.

Above and Beyond is role-playing game supple-

ment dealing with high-powered, superheroic games.

Epic, world-shaking powers, missions of cosmic im-

portance, saving not just the world but the universe,

and what it means to be more than human — all of

these and more are inside.

Chapter Two is about the same issues from a

“metagame” point of view. Where could powers like

this come from? How high a level is too high? How

can the GM allow powers like Mind Control and

Time Travel without their breaking the game? What

kinds of hooks into characters this strong does the

GM have?

Using this Book

Chapter Three describes the “control knobs” of

the universe. How deadly will the game be? How

realistic? Will it be centered near the Earth, or will it

wander across galaxies and dimensions?

Players and GMs alike will ind useful resources

here, for creating cosmic heroes and nihilistic vil-

lains, or just for creating someone with unwanted and

unbelievable power thrust on them.

Chapter Four is the “crunchy bits” chapter, with a

selection of powers that are appropriate to high-pow-

ered games, a few new feats, and some suggestions

for making interesting custom powers.

Most of what youʼll ind in this book are essays

and discussions about running high-powered games

of epic scope. These can be used with any super-

hero role-playing game (and probably with some that

arenʼt speciically meant for superheroes), though the

systems and rules described in this book are designed

speciically for use with M&M Superlink™. The au-

thors of this book consider the rules found in M&M

to be some of the best superhero RPG rules published

to date. If you prefer a different system, you will have

to do a little bit of work converting our character and

power statistics to your favorite game.

Chapter Five has a roster of high-powered heroes,

the Oversight Watch, and villains who could actually

challenge them without destroying Earth along the

way.

Chapter Six has interesting locations for a high-

powered game, from an orbital headquarters to a

dimension of dread.

If youʼre already familiar with the rules in M&M,

you wonʼt need anything extra to take advantage of

the material in this book. A pencil, some paper, and a

d20 are still all you need to play.

What Is Valent Games?

Valent Games is a small, independent

game company run by Colin Fredericks. Our

website is http://www.valentgames.com, and

our other products include the science iction

RPG “Valence 592”, and an RPG aptly named

“Console,” which parodies console games,

Page 3

Above and Beyond

References and

Inspiration

lent example of how to deal with massively powerful,

somewhat inhuman characters while still tying them

to Earth and ordinary human beings.

Ininity Watch , from Marvel Comics, came out of

the aftermath of a major Marvel crossover, the Ininity

Gauntlet story. While Ininity Watch is no longer in

print, Ininity Gauntlet can be found in collected

form. Everyone whoʼs anyone on the cosmic scale of

the Marvel Universe can be found here.

Most superhero comics deal with more down-

to-earth levels of power. Most heroes deal more

with their own city or country than threats to the

whole universe. However, there have been a few

comics published in which the characters operated

on a higher level. These comics served to inspire this

book, and hopefully they can lend a bit of inspiration

to your game as well.

The First , from Crossgen Comics, is part godly

drama, part soap opera. It has little to lend to the “hu-

mans who become gods” standard view of things, but

much to contribute to a game in which the characters

are gods to begin with. It is still in print at the time of

this writing.

Jack Kirbyʼs New Gods , published by DC

Comics, was probably the irst of this genre of com-

ics. The stories of New Genesis and Apokolips took

place far from Earth, and the threats they faced were

anything but trivial. Some of the New Gods stories

can be found in collected form.

JMSʼ Rising Stars , from Top Cow Comics, is

another one that doesnʼt deal with massive power

levels, but is very good if your characters want to

change the world.

Squadron Supreme, a 12-issue series from Marvel

Comics in 1985 and 86, is an interesting look at what

people might do if they had, not only the ability to

change the world, but the drive to do it. Worth reading

because at least one of your players will think about

playing a hyperintelligent biologist with the potential

to cure cancer. It can be found in collected edition.

The Authority , from Wildstorm Comics, is the

most visible of the recent über-powerful teams. Its

short-lived spin-off, The Monarchy , was focused on

even higher power levels. The irst Authority series

can be found in collected form, and the second one is

still in print at the time of this writing.

Crisis on Ininite Earths and the nine-years-

later follow-up Zero Hour , both miniseries from

DC Comics, exemplify the problems that ordinary

superheroes have in dealing with the truly cosmic...

and also show how very effective they can be when it

comes to crunch time. Both can be found in collected

form. Theyʼre also good examples of why you should

keep your cosmology simple — both stories were

told for the express purpose of cleaning up the DC

universe.

Several more mainstream comics, such as DCʼs

Superman and Justice League , Marvelʼs Thor ,

Captain Marvel , and Silver Surfer, and Crossgenʼs

Negation, Lawbringer, and Mark of Charon have had

to deal with threats beyond the average supervillain

from time to time, and have had to wonder how far

removed from humanity they really are. Most of them

donʼt deal with such threats on a daily basis, though.

In more “respectable” literature, the works of Neil

Gaiman ( Good Omens and American Gods ), Stephen

R. Donaldson (the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant ),

Roger Zelazny (his Amber series), Isaac Asimov ( The

End of Eternity ) and Michael Moorcock (heck, pick

any of his books) , among others, all contain char-

acters with power — and often angst — far beyond

that of mortal men. Though most of these arenʼt very

“comicy”, they can be useful inspiration when creat-

ing a game that drifts a bit further from mainstream

comics than most.

The Spectre , from DC Comics, is the living em-

bodiment of Godʼs wrath, linked to a human soul. It

doesnʼt get much bigger than that...

... unless youʼre one of the Endless, a character in

Sandman . Neil Gaimanʼs Sandman was published by

Vertigo Comics. Perhaps one of the most acclaimed

storylines in all of comics, and winner of several

Eisner Awards. It is currently out of print, but can be

found in collected form in most bookstores. An excel-

Page 4

Above and Beyond

take an entity of even more unimaginable power to

bind them all together against their wills.

Chapter One

Some hero groups arenʼt really well-organized.

They just sort of fall together when things go bad.

Mister Amazing notices a problem, calls Chaos Girl,

who inds out that itʼs even worse than M.A. thought,

and suddenly the Universal Defenders are assembled

once again.

This chapter deals with the in-character motiva-

tions, personalities, and reactions of cosmic PCs.

The Legion of Power

Since role-playing is a group activity, characters

will need to have some suitable friends to help them

take over — uh, I mean save — the world.

Once the teamʼs all together and has a good

idea of what theyʼre going to do (which is a whole

separate discussion), theyʼll need to ind a suitable

headquarters. Several suggestions can be found in

Chapter Six.

All the players for a high-powered game should

talk to each other while creating characters. Not

only does this serve the usual purpose of preventing

excessive power overlap (“Hey, I made a bruiser!”

“Me too.” “Me three.” “Bummer.”), it provides the

opportunity to decide where the campaignʼs going. If

one character wants to change the world and another

only wants to preserve it, theyʼre inevitably going to

come to blows at some point.

Membership Drives

If your character isnʼt one of the founding mem-

bers of a cosmic super-team, they could join in any

number of ways:

Like most super-teams, cosmic teams need a rea-

son to be together. The standard justiication is that

each of them alone could save a world, but together

they can save the universe. This works well for teams

with interlocking powers and very little overlap (i.e.

thereʼs only one dude with super-strength, only one

with teleportation, etc.). Many comics super-teams

were formed for this exact reason, “to defend the

world from threats that no single hero could handle.”

Cosmic teams often have huge databases of

information gathered on less powerful heroes, and

pull recruits from those ranks when someoneʼs power

level becomes suficient. Who better to recruit than

someone whoʼs been watched for years, especially if

itʼs someone with a good record?

Teams with a more competitive attitude might

even hold tryouts, a sort of “Super Olympics”, with

the winners being allowed to join the team. The prob-

lem with this method is that power doesnʼt always

equate to morality, and the team might end up with

members who donʼt get along. In an ordinary super-

Companionship is a good answer too. Not many

people can really understand what itʼs like to ight

the Destiny Demon at the Nexus of Space and Time,

while simultaneously protecting their girlfriend who

doesnʼt know the heroʼs secret identity. Teams held

together by companionship should have at least one

scene in each gaming session when the characters just

plain hang out somewhere. It could be at a bar or in

the middle of the Dark Zone (or in the middle of a

ight with totally inferior foes), but the characters are

simply there to hang out, talk, and relax.

On A Higher Level

The characters in a game of this scope are

assumed to be at least 20th level (by M&M

standards), though a single team could easily

range from 15th to 30th if everyone has their

own little niche. Typically the combatants will

be a bit higher-level, while the detective or

scout types will be lower, simply because they

donʼt need the raw bludgeoning power.

Some few super-groups are forced together by an

outside entity, through mind control, threats, or black-

mail. This is very rare for cosmic groups, as it would

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