Victor_Von said:
Speaking as a player, I have to disagree with this logic. First off, some players do abuse things if you give them a chance. I'd almost go with 'most players' on this one, but maybe that's just my gloomy perspective on human nature-- "Man want to WIN!" to misquote Saul Bellow. Online the trust level is lower than with someone you've gamed with for years, too. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that trust is earned with time and experience.
Working knowledge of an entirely different game system-- one that can be incredibly technical, and has its own set of abuses and exploits-- is very different than working knowledge of Comic Book Science, which isn't real world quantum physics but has a loose logic of its own.
And how is channeling a given pantheon of freaking GODS a limitation? They're gods. A pantheon tends to cover everything that matters to a given society. I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting to see a shapeshifter who jumps from Qetzocoatl to Tlaloc to Xipe Topec, but I'd have to know what those forms DO before even contemplating approval.
And I'm not even a GM.
A GM has to know what he's getting into to approve something, and has to have the final word on what is or isn't balanced. That doesn't vary between gaming systems. I'm not saying players shouldn't push and try new things, but there's nothing wrong with a GM who keeps the word 'no' handy. I'd prefer it to finding myself in a broken campaign where everyone's overpowered and there are no challenges.
Well, admittedly, the book does also say you have to know when to say no. As to Aztec gods, it isn't a limitation so much as a category (excuse the term limited) for Shapeshift, but a player could always make up a fake Aztec god. If I described the actual info known about Huitzilopachtli and then described a fake god, I bet I could trick around 50% of subjects in a double-blind experiment into thinking that the fake one was the real Aztec god when asked. Of course, info on the Aztec gods is fully available on the internet. Of course, so are the SRD spells for D&D.
As to the requirement of full knowledge of the game system, I would say that's a canard considering the nature of Mutants and Masterminds. If this was Feng Shui or Risus, maybe, but the correlation between the two systems is high, and it would be up to the player to fit the spell into M&M anyway, so the GM doesn't need to have to figure that out.
And as to players/abuse/etc, such a concept can often be true in D&D, and it's why D&D sometimes need a strict hardline Rules-as-Written GM, but in M&M, the game is intentionally looser to give you the power to create something cool. By default, this carries the necessary caveat that it also gives the power to abuse. It's rather easy to make a really lame and unfun character (Nukleor, the man who blows up the planet every round or Light-Bright, the hero who fills all of North America with blinding light except for herself, etc). Trust is important. If you lose that and you start getting into strict enforcement, you lose a lot of the ability to create cool things, and you change the entire tone of the game. It can cause the game to slow to a crawl. When I've run M&M in real life, it has been a smashing success when I blatantly copied from a far superior GM than myself and answered almost every question of "Can I...X?" with "Sure, but it'll cost you a Hero Point / Extra Effort".
Since face-to-face is different, I'd bet you actually could make it work with a totalitarian GM. But PbP is different. You need momentum or the game will slow and die. Mother-may-I with the GM also hurts, particularly when the GM and player have different posting schedules.
A good example of this--the players are excited about the game and want it to push forward, but the GM is kind of slow, so the players try to do something to help the game go forward
Player A: Oh crap! Dr. Dark? I use my datalink to send an IM to Player B.
Player B: Whoah, cool! I'm going to use Super Speed to come help Player A. I'll try to make a Sonic Boom to distract Dr. Dark.
Player A: Good idea! If I get the chance, I'm going to use Phoenix Pinions on him.
Now, there are several GM responses. Here's the response from the GM that I'll call the 'good' response for PbP (good because it's going to keep pace and momentum and make the game exciting)
GM: Alright, cool. B, you normally don't have the Sonic Boom power feat on your Super Speed, so you're now Fatigued, but Dr. Dark is totally confused, and A, you get a chance to take an action against him, using Phoenix Pinions and engulfing him in a rain of fiery arrows. B, you can spend a hero point to recover
Now the bad response (assume that the GM is technically correct about everything he says)
GM: Yeah, A. Actually I've been looking at your character sheet, and you can't use your Datalink because there aren't any computers close enough. And B, although it might seem like you can get there in 1 round, I've been reading ATT, and according to Steve Kenson, the official interpretation of your Super Speed states that you would actually take 2 hours to get there. Check this link for the explanation of why. Also, you can't do a Sonic Boom because you don't have that power. You could technically add a power feat with extra effort, but that's subject to my approval, so I have to think about it, though I'm leaning towards no. Also, A, I don't understand how your Phoenix Pinions is supposed to work. I think you paid for a power feat when you should have paid for an extra here, and the way you linked it is weird. Is it supposed to unleash fiery energy from the legendary phoenix in the form of a hail of fiery pinions? I don't see the mystic descriptor, and you have it listed for the wrong shape type, I think. Shouldn't it also be a slow projectile? A, let's pause while you explain it to me and we work out exactly how the power should be costed. Also, let's rewind back to when Dr. Dark appeared because none of that stuff you did could actually happen.
Just to say, as a random aside, Raylis has shown himself to be an excellent example of the first style of GM. As far as PbP M&M GMing goes, he is the best I've seen yet on this forum (and clearly better than me too!)