Graf
Explorer
Since I'm having trouble posting to the reviews section I figured I'd put this up here for now. (Also lets me get comments and see how badly I've messed up the html code).
Paragon's Review
This is a a review of the pdf.
Mutants and Masterminds in a sentence (or three)
Probably the most popular and successful superhero rpg now on the market. The system is constructed such that almost anything is possible (except for a few abilities that ruin everyone's fun). Given the relative level of complexity it plays simply with few die rolls (i.e. the complexity comes during prep time as opposed to during game time).
Overview
Paragons, the (at this point) long awaited new toolbox/campaign setting by Green Ronin is designed to enable you to create and run your own 'realistic superhero' (as they put it "normal people, paranormal power") game, as well as provide you with a full setting. The marketing blurb goes further claiming "multiple settings in one".
The book, while excellent, doesn't live up to the second blurb. The quality stuff in the book is all from one setting, the "Paragons setting". I found few ideas that were interesting but related to/from a 'different setting'; I'll get into it in more detail below but every time the book stops talking about the Paragon Setting it slips into a vague murk of half formed ideas. These sections aren't large, but their existence are one of two key factors that robbed the book of a 5th star. The other reason the book misses the final star is that, in trying to make the book modular, too much was taken out. The Paragons setting itself isn't complete; nor is there enough in the book to really build a complete setting without a fair amount of GM work.
My personal feeling is that the book would have worked better as two books. The Paragons Setting is extremely good. But weaker writing and an apparent inability to produce enough (read: much of any) interesting material that isn't related to the Paragons Setting material keeps the book from living up to its marketing.
It's hard not to think that, instead of trying to force it all into one schedule-busting project and rushing to get it ready by August GR would have done better to split it up; coming out with a shorter setting book in time for GenCon and pushing back the deadline for a second "toolbox" book until they had compelling material for it.
Review Approach
I'll try to look at each chapter from the standpoint of someone who wants a Setting (ala Freedom City, GR's existing super hero world) and as someone who wants a toolbox (i.e. to make their own setting).
What are the spoiler blocks in the review? They're for tichy/anal retentive comments. The sort of thing that is too pedantic to really go in a review. Their saving grace (other than giving me a chance to run my mouth even more) is that you -will- get a better idea about the book, or what I think about the book, from reading them.
I should also mention that when I refer to a character as being a "homage" or "clone" I mean it in a good way. If you've got a big strong savage monster dude with no other powers, besides his strength, he's basically the Hulk. So long as there is something interesting/new going on I dig it. There are a bunch of characters in the book like that, and I think they're awesome. (Except Raindance, but she's just one character).
Editing
Decent. Typos include
*mortal instead of mortar
*one character has a gather info font set wrong
*several (~4) female characters probably should have the attractive feat but don't
*a few sentences are awkward
*"degree of concentration" instead of "concentrations" (pg 221)
*"Might" instead of "mighty" (pg 29)
*"while military units" instead of "whole military units" (pg 27)
*The last line of Invincible Iron Whirlwind's description (pg 62) is probably missing the word "grant" or "has" somewhere.
That's just the stuff I picked up from my read through.
I'd put it around the " level of WotC products" (4 out of 5 probably); the errors don't really harm understanding but you wonder why nobody read it after they ran spellcheck.
Art
Similar or slightly weaker than MnM 2nd ed standards; I focused mostly on the character portraits, as they the most use in game, represent the largest proportion of the art (by far) as well as the best pieces, in my opinion at least.
There are a number of great pieces (Naga, Icon, Vom Stahl, Pontifex) as well several simpler pictures that really seemed to capture the character concept well (Decoy, Silas the Elder, Ugly Jake, Phenom). I actually imagined Silas completely differently, but the artist did a great job making "fat wizard" seem more interesting that you would think.
And there are a few character concepts that would seem to offer copious opportunities for cool art but the execution was "blah" (Ravana, Otherkin, the Necropolitan).
Art Quibbles
[sblock]
*The Patriot character shows up a lot (at least three places that I saw; including the cover). As his appearance/costume/background/personality are bland I thought this was a shame; especially given that MnM books have generally featured extremely strong homage cover work (see the award winning Ultimate Power). I understand why Patriot, the character, was constructed the way he was, but I think the book would be more eye-catching and appealing if you'd featured almost anyone else.
*Due to the nature of the book a relatively large amount of characters could be described as "normal people in street clothes". This doesn't bother me, per se. But at least two of these have appearances that don't match details in the text. Little stuff like "is going grey" or "her trademark outfit is all-white". Perversely this bothers me. I can understand fantasy art deviating a bit; if you're drawing something with a lot of limbs and eyes it's easy to see a "triangular eye" turning into a "diamond-shaped eye" . For completely normal and human character portraits I think you should either draw to match the text, or change the text (Arbiter doesn't need to be graying if his picture isn't, Phenom's trademark outfit can be yellow instead of white if the artist winds up drawing a yellow outfit).
*Randomly, the photo on page 211 looks like the PRA agent is trying to execute a baby/moster which is leaping from it's stroller at the agent.
I think that, in actuality, there is supposed to be a baby in the stroller that is being saved by the PRA. Maybe.
Anyway the first time I saw the picture I thought the monster had been riding in the baby carriage and jumped out at the agent... "John Woo's Newest Film: Attack of the Killer Mutant Babies".
[/sblock]
Chapter 1
A basic introduction, what are paragons (AKA superheroes), etc. As an introductory chapter it's simple, however it does it's job hitting on a few key points (some quite creative):
Default Paragons offers the following ideas:
0) the game is oriented toward PL 10 -- this is default for MnM but is honestly extremely powerful. Except for some limits on overall power, PL 10 characters (with 150 points) can do basically anything; are on par with, if not more powerful than, most every non-cosmic comic book character and much more powerful than a typical realistic setting (Wild Cards, Heroes, Watchmen). Initially I struggled with this, but I think it's a good choice [sblock]*it's new (in that virtually realistic settings have generally stuck with more limited power levels
*it matches existing MnM stuff (of which there is a lot of generally high quality)
* players -love- playing awesomely powerful characters
*Ultimately I think it offers maximal flexibility
i.e. dialing down is not so difficult but increasing power levels can be tricky (if Hellboy can sense forces of darkness the second they arrive on earth on earth, and teleport there a round later then the BPRD stories get a lot more boring) -- by starting at a high power level you're confident that the game can take the shocks that a party of PL 10 PCs can deliver[/sblock]
1) powers can't be identified easily, there are no physical differences (no "X-Gene", no "midiclorians") that identify paragons
2) certain kinds of powers product certain kinds of personalities, which in turn produce powers and create a sort of cycle (in some cases a vicious one). This is used to explain the prevalence of high-powered megalomaniacs (read: super-villains). Great Idea!
3) non-human paragons are handled reasonably well. Nobody knows what Aliens/Walk-ins/Avatars/Gods are, but they're wandering around anyway.
The relationship between psychology and power development (#2) is a relatively rich vein (a half dozen character ideas popped into my head just from reading the text, YMMV). I also liked the implications of super-powered people appearing normal. It's milked for all it's worth in later chapters, as it should be (it's a great idea).
As a toolbox
Good and on target. You get options, explanations of the options and a couple of plug and play ideas. I particularly liked the list of "random paragons with minor but useful powers" (the plus sized model character idea was particularly brilliant but they were all good).
As a setting
Decent. A proper setting intro would have included a discussion of key events and major actors (much like Freedom City included a discussion of its fallen "favored son" Centurion).
It's worth pointing out here that the Paragon's setting qua setting struggles only in one area: it doesn't have a proper history. It's supposed to be made up by the GM to match their own desires; there is talk about a "The Breakout" when super heroes appeared, but just a few general suggestions. Of course, since it's impossible to have a setting without having past events that have shaped it, it -does- have a history. But you have to dig it out of the character histories later (see Mindbender, Rampage, Prophet, the Evanston Incident, Vanguard, etc).
While this makes for interesting reading the first time through it's going to be hard for a GM later when they want to figure out when key events occurred and they're paging through 10 different backstories. A sidebar with this proto-history here (or somewhere else in the book) would have helped usability a lot.
As would just sucking it up and making an official history; since there's no "history toolbox" for building a setting history in the book it's not like you'd be invalidating something.
Chapter 2
But for Chapter 3 the weakest of the chapters.
This Chapter tries to delve into "realistic" superheroes material. It does a poor job. Various topics, (Religion, media, etc) are brought out, discussed for a few breezy paragraphs and then dropped.
It's OK to say obvious things like "the government might require paragons to register", "Famous paragons might be approached by companies to endorse their products" or "Mind reading is an invasion of someone's privacy" as long as the chapter is going to go somewhere with it (details that wouldn't be obvious, adventure arcs, story ideas, anything really). I could have handled a chapter that dealt with legal precedents regarding privacy, the game effects (or adventure hooks related to) product endorsement or how registration might work. But the chapter never tries to get beyond the level of vague fluff text.
There are a few good ideas floating around (newly-minted Paragons licensing the identities of existing comic book characters, "realistic comics", the ACME devices system*, the Philadelphia experiment) but nothing that warranted a chapter. These ideas could have been subsumed in a few text blocks somewhere.
*ACME devices are basically "impossible devices"; allowing the player to make them work (and buy these kinds of things normally) but limiting their ability to affect the game world. There is actually a scale for how this works which can vary by device (i.e. only works for you, only works for you and other paragons, anyone can use it but it can't be duplicated, etc.). Some suggestions allow further refinement, where the device does work... but the components involved shouldn't be able to handle the strain (so in 15 years when materials sciences catch up you will be able to have a world filled with flying cars, just not now). This is all basically just a way for the GM to control the impact of super-inventiveness on the game. It's (properly to my mind) left in the realm of GM fiat and allows games to feature super-advanced technology without having it affect the modern world.
Toolbox
On target but weak. If you're interested in running a game that includes superhuman registration, or privacy rights, you'll already have thought of everything the book brings up. ACME devices are interesting, of course, but already a sidebar.
Setting
Hard to comment meaningfully. The book waffles between meta-confusion (not having a clear idea what would happen) and in-game confusion (world religions are -sure- that... they have no idea what's going on). So the religious segments are technically useful (if uninteresting) while the other sections aren't really very useful, since you have to basically make it all up yourself and aren't given much in the way of tools to make that easier.
[sblock]
Would the Pope say -something- about Paragons? Issue some kind of statement? I think so. I haven't got the foggiest idea what he'd say, but he'd say something. Shadowrun, for example, made an attempt to grapple with this; there were a bunch of kinda vague rules for Catholics involving magic and addressing issues (i.e. do Orks have souls...) I don't think that the response would be "confusion". I just don't. Maybe my biases are showing through. I mean... I'm sure they weren't expecting things like abortion or condoms 200 years ago but the Pope and the Church have figured out what their stances are on this stuff. I think they'd make some kind of stance.
Ditto the other religions.
To my mind this is where a setting can really make a contribution to your game. Saying "the Christian reaction is as diverse as Christians are" is punting a hot potato back for the GM to deal with.[/sblock]
Chapter 3
It's rare that I like an idea more before I understand what it is; but that was the case here. I liked the Imageria more before I read the chapter about it. Reading through the other sections of the book you have images of a mysterious Other. Bizarre realms filled with a mixture of humanity's psychological detritus and alien energies. Hidden secrets available for those who can brave eldrich horrors. Bizarre platonic ideals warring and combining with the ur-forces that men call gods. You know, cool stuff.
At no point, until I actually read the chapter, did I expect paint-by-numbers mashup of Werewolf and DnD's cosmology with a few paragraphs (indirectly) invoking the Sandman comics. I'm not being snide, it's just blatant. 90% of it seems to have been pulled directly from Werewolf or the Manual of the Planes, and not even the interesting parts either.
[sblock]
To be specific:
The Imageria touches the real world sometimes; basically exactly the same way that the spirit world touches the real world in Werewolf (using the same terms even!). Then you have the ethereal realm (called the Border); just like the Ethereal in DnD. After that you have the Reaches and the Depths, which are a mash of different planes. You get the inner planes (slightly toned down, the realm of Fire is actually just a desert, but still has the city of brass); Faerie, the Dream, Godshome, Archeron (from Werewolf) and so forth. Then you have the Abyss, something else ported over from Werewolf (though in this case I think it's 1st edition), and then the Deep Realms which is where the unknowable face of god lives.
(The realistic superheroes game has a place where god sits? Yes yes it does. But don't worry. It's 'unknownable' and 'different for every visitor'. So we're still po-mo.)
[/sblock]
I'm not really sure why 1) GR/Kenson felt that they needed to write a short rehash of two existing game products 2) why they put it in their "realistic" superhero game.
Why go through the effort of making Glyph and the rest of the Pact so weird and unique just to turn around and say "yeah, and they're really just from a bland fantasy mulch".
It's also a bizarre spot to have dropped the toolbox method completely. There is no toolbox for this chapter. The Imageria is presented whole cloth in it's entirety. Not that you can't hack it apart of course and move things around, but if there was any chapter that would seem to call out for lots of different options (or at least some other option besides a default one) it would be this one.
[sblock]Having given it more thought last night, I'm thinking that they were trying to go for Fables. Fables is a brilliant comic about fairy tales who've escaped into the modern world. It's won lots of awards, its fantastic and fantasy but with a modern twist. Unfortunately what drove the Fables series was really the characters and stories. The mad-cap improbability of the physics of the place was constructed to allow maximal storytelling (where do Jack's Beans take him?). A GM can go a lot further with a bunch of random story ideas about what could happen in an impossible realm than with an "encyclopedia of places that don't fit with the theme of your game and your players won't want to go".[/sblock]
As a toolbox/Setting
There really isn't much in this chapter for a GM period, whatever you're trying to do. Unless you want to do high fantasy planecrawling. At which point you should get the Manual of the Planes (WotC).
[sblock]
Chapter 6 will briefly take up the struggle to make the Imageria seem interesting; it's apparently supposed to be a way for DMs to add a Fantastic Four/Challengers of the Unknown flavor to the game. I liked the Imageria after I'd read that but before I'd actually looked at Chapter 3. But even then there were signs of trouble. Specifically the two sample adventure ideas involving the Imageria campaign, the Imaginauts, don't actually involve the Imageria! One is "something came -back- with you" and the other is "Freedom City is in the Imageria!"; writing the second one takes a certain amount of balls, since they turn around and provide the same adventure idea in the 'Freedom City is in the Imageria!' Campaign a few pages later. When neither of the campaign hooks involve anything from the Imageria you get the feeling like the authors are just as lost as you are in trying to come up with something interesting; not a good feeling.
It's not that I hate the idea of the Imageria or anything like that. But if you haven't got any material for it you should just sock the chapter, make the Imageria a sidebar saying "we may put out a book later to give you ideas but just stick anything in there that works for your story" and leave it at that. As I've mentioned before there is enough material for Paragons overall to make a great book, cutting the page count down and focusing on the good stuff would have been a much better move.[/sblock]
Chapter 4
The book heads back to the Paragons setting here and starts to deliver. In-and-of-itself the chapter is a bit of a mixed bag, too many of the organizations (Foregone Conclusions, Harbingers, Gordon Technologies, PRA, the Inititative) feel a bit perfunctory, but
1) it forms a supporting framework for Chapter 5
2) is filled with lots of fiddly little mechanical bits that GMs love to have done for them (typical agents of various organizations, NPCs that don't really require a full write-up but do need stats), etc.
3) There are some stand out ideas
The standouts are MERLIN (a mix between google and Global Frequency), the "social/business networking" groups (Paramount Club/PPS) and Zero Latitude (I don't know why I like them, but I do).
Several other groups (the Pact, the Rosemont Center) are brought up to the level of awesome by the characters in the next chapter.
Vanguard, the Justice League/Avengers of the setting, never got interesting for me.
I'm, unreasonably, on the fence about the Pantheon, the idea is excellent, flexible and cool, but more NPCs and details would be necessary to seriously include them in a game. [sblock]I initially thought they got one NPC, Epicurus, but in fact Proteus' description indicates that he's their leader/patron, odd since the group description seems to suggest that they're lead by Gaia.
He also doesn't fit their motif at all.
(But you could fit the entire Teragen from Aberrant in here with space to spare, so it's not like you're lacking in options to fill them out if you have that material).[/sblock]
The Church of Jesus Christ, Paragon gave me some trouble originally but has grown on me. I think it's improbable that an Eastern Orthodox Church would wind up embracing Protestant-style mega-church marketing and call itself "the Church of Jesus Christ, Paragon". And, if were a self-ordained saint with superpowers and I knew about the Anti-Christ (or one of his servants) I would just denounce him to the world. Don't really see him covering up for the guy. But it is what it is and it's good for all that.
The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers
[sblock]Oh and the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers are here. Yeah, I was initially appalled (Japanese people named Danny Rock*; Kyoto is both a prefecture and a city, but the prefecture doesn't have a mayor; terrible code names that sound like they came from poorly translated subtitles of old Hong Kong Kung-fu movies) -- however on reflection I think it's supposed to be that way. I mean... the power rangers? it's supposed to be absurdly unrealistic and campy, right? One of the guys regeneration powers is actually laugh-out-loud over the top.
So while it doesn't really belong in anything like a "realistic game" it's profoundly, improbably weird and I'm inclined to give it a hearty thumbs up on those grounds alone.
In all honesty, if you're going to market a book as "many settings in one" you need lots of these, appealing-to-somebody/utterly insane/contradictory-but-stimulating type ideas. The fact that this is the only idea/set of characters/group that wouldn't easily fit into the default Paragon's setting suggests that they didn't have time to really come up with anything beyond the Paragon's setting.
* = The contributor to the book has pointed out that the last name is spelled Rokku. Which is both true and how you would write the sound for "Rock" in Roma-ji. I personally couldn't introduce a Japanese guy named Danny Rock as the media director of the Power Rangers to my players without them assuming I was aiming for satire. Personally I think satire rocks but your millage, as always, may vary.
[/sblock]
As a toolbox
Excellent. The organizations are modular and simple (i.e. built around a core theme). There is a good balance between detail and generality. By focusing on roles and basically skipping relationships between different agencies you have maximum flexibility.
As a setting
The organizations are basically unconnected to each other. A reasonable job is done here (and in Chapter Six) explaining their roles and how they're related. But they have no connected history really. So the setting suffers from the decision not to include any of that.
But bland vagueness of the previous chapters is mostly gone and the flavor and color of the better organizations begins to help create the image of a setting (if not a setting itself).
Nitpick
[sblock]
One organization has a "secret structure" hidden within it. I appreciate that something like that has been included but this one is so baroque as to verge on the laugh-out-loud absurd. It seems improbable that, given that this organization was created after superheroes appears (in the Paragons setting less than ten years ago) could possible have created this many hidden levels of initiation with funny titles, super-advanced databases, weird voting procedures etc.
Especially since there are no founders or creators of the system. It's just presented without explanation. It is a neat system/idea so I think it's a good inclusion, but I can't see anyone with the brains and determination to set it up actually setting it up this way. Anyway some sort of founder should have been included IMHO.
The contributor responded to the comment about this structure here.
[/sblock]
Chapter 5
The meat of the book really. Everything flows into this chapter and most everything good comes out of it.
It's the longest chapter (100+ pages), has the most creative ideas and is the most mechanically detailed as well.
Though it's not explicitly mentioned the characters conform to one of several broad types:
[Naturally these lines are naturally arbitrary and vague; Proxy would work extremely well in a straight super-powered game, for example. Calamity Jane is on the edge of business people and super hero. I'm just doing this to give you an idea of what's in there without spoiling too much.]
1. Encounter characters (Crybaby/Lullaby, The Burning Man, Logar, the Ghost, the House that Hate Built, Unifier). These encounters are in the X-Files vein; basically a mini-adventure in the form of a character with "spooky powers" that produce a crisis for the PCs to solve.
2. Super-powered business people (Network, Blueshift, the Arbiter, the Answer, the Gourmand, Proxy, maybe Calamity Jane). These characters are the embodiment of "Heroes but turned up to 11" (i.e. PL 10)
3. Superheroes and villains (Vanguard, the Rosemont Center, their foes and a few similar characters (two "all-american" superheroes, a batman clone, a PL8 wannabe hero) and few miscellaneous characters.
4. Characters from superhero comics -- i.e. the Kingpin or Lex Luthor aren't really super-villains, neither Oracle nor John Constantine are a superhero but they live in a comic book world. This section is probably close to half the chapter -- it includes the not insubstantial number of 'magic' characters, as well as a whole gamut of conspirators, party animals, an Indian Jones clone, a Laura Croft clone, a(nother) Hulk clone, the bitter hero-hunting fan, superpowered mobsters, and so on.
It's hard to avoid gushing. I'll just say that the characters are generally excellent in concept and, as has been characteristic of MnM products in the past, care is taken in the text to highlight fiddly bits of certain difficult mechanics in plain language.
Honestly I felt that the book is worth owning just for these hundred pages.
Interestingly a number of characters seem to be "two different iterations of the same idea". I'm thinking specifically of Icon/Otherkin, Alpha Male/the Patriot, Mr. Zero/Impostor/Proxy, Prophet/17, Rampage/Rojas, Luminary/Vom Stal, and Calamity Jane/Valkyrie. Initially this was a bit jarring but the implementations are different enough mechanically and in terms of story to stand on their own; in fact the idea's grown on me tremendously.
[sblock]
Here's why the idea grew on me:
1. If paragons are tapping into ideas/platonic ideals/segments of the godhead from the Imageria then it makes sense that people would wind up tapping into the same thing. This could form the backup of a whole campaign.
2. You get very interesting dichotomies. I can see Calamity Jane and Valkyrie meeting periodically for coffee, or hating each other. Ditto almost everyone else. People love Thing/Hulk fights; Rampage vs Rojas would be equally cool. Maybe Luminary and Vom Stal lost their memories (and are both combat leaders of their respective teams) for a reason? The players are likely to find both Alpha Male and Patriot frustrating, but having both around allows the GM to contrast the two characters and the choices people make.
3. As I said before the characters are different; specifically in terms of their motivations; so they're unlikely to "feel" the same.
[/sblock]
Overall there are just some brilliant characters floating around in here. I was particularly taken with Icon (everyone who posts about this book seems to like her), Ugly Jake, Enigma, Prophet, Calamity Jane, Rojas, Proxy, and the Unifier.
In the interests of balance I should say that
*I was underwhelmed by Dire Straits, Luminary and Raindance. (As mentioned elsewhere Mindbender irritates me immensely.) Four characters aren't much of course.
Raindance
[sblock](she's a -direct- port of a character from Gen13; as I said above homages are fine, but you need to do something new. Raindance really just is Sarah Rainmaker. If you're going to clone a relatively distinct character, the only Native American lesbian character in comics (with a stereotypically Native-Americans-are-close-to-nature power set), I think you're under obligation to do something novel.[/sblock]
*The "encounter characters" as a group also didn't particularly inspire me, but I can see why they're included and they are a valuable mechanical tool for showing GMs who want to run their own games how to construct those sorts of encounters.
As a toolbox
In terms of being a toolbox it's out-of-the-park 6 stars. The characters are generally constructed to sit alone, or in a silo with a few other linked characters (members of the same team/faction). Several lynch-pin characters (Patriot and Proteus) actually have menus of possible backgrounds; Calamity Jane does them one better by having an interesting and evocative background with a number of different ways it can be subverted or altered. Overall quality is high and each description includes a "uses for <character name>" section that highlights different roles the character could play in the game. I wouldn't personally want to run a game focusing on "Icon as a sexual predator" but I think it shows that the Green Ronin was thinking and trying to push boundaries a bit by including some offbeat stuff.
Likewise the "two characters with similar ideas" enhances the toolbox-like-nature of the book. Like 17 but want him to have better precognitive powers? Look at Prophet. Want Calamity Jane to have battle armor? Look at Valkyrie.
You can nit-pick, and I will below, but it's really solid gold.
As a setting
This chapter is so rich with convoluted ideas that it's 5 star as setting material. But again the toolbox approach hampers the development of a cohesive setting a bit. Freedom City benefited from very tight relationships between the characters, both heroes and villains. While a few characters get a sentence or two (Alpha Male wants to join Vanguard) there is no attempt to tie it all together. Who came first? Who motivated who?
So much more could be built out of the fertile ground of this chapter. This may be addressed in a future book (and there will certainly be long and intricate fan-worlds on the ATT boards in any case) but the flirtation with a setting qua setting in the form of a proto-history woven through certain character's backgrounds comes up short.
Nitpicks
[sblock]
As with any chapter this rich I have nitpicks and opinions. Don't take this as anything more than geekish parsing.
*There are also a lot of shapechangers. There are several different ways to achieve shapechanging-type-effects in MnM and the characters are mechanically diverse, but I count 6ish shapechangers (4 of which are conspirators) and a bunch of other mind controllers. Since the game is supposed to enable an x-files/heroes mystery component it's not terrible. But it seemed like a lot to me.
*Hot rich chicks! "She is the extremely beautiful and gifted daughter of a family of great wealth" -- there are four female characters with this background (Dumont, Empress, Mindbender,Phenom, Pontifex). I can't find any males who are similar. It's not that any given character (except Mindbinder) is uninteresting and I'm inclined to let a few slide (the Lara Croft homage is a homage; Phenom subverts it brilliantly which is why I said 4 instead of 5) but it seems like sloppy writing. 'Beautiful, gifted, socially exalted/unattainable' do not a personality make.
*The attractive feat and female characters. There is a feat in MnM to designate a character is attractive (it gives social skill bonuses vs. the opposite sex). A lot of female characters seem like they should have it but don't. This has cropped up once or twice before in MnM books (notably Freedom City with Tesla Atom); but it's particularly bad here. If a character, invariably female, is described as being "beautiful" in their character description, particularly if it's mentioned repeatedly and or used to explain something (they have an online fan club, they frequently take use their appearance to take advantage of males, their character is "learning what it means to be rich and beautiful", etc. etc.), they ought to have attractive. MnM products are generally fastidious about getting these sorts of mechanical details correct so it feels weird when someone is described as "having male fanclubs world-wide" but doesn't have the feat. Specifically talking about (Bodyshop, Calamity Jane, Ponitfex). Since a lot is made (at least on the Internet) about how the female body is portrayed in comics I can understand wanting to avoid giving it out too freely; but then drop it from the character all together (or -gasp- describe them as being charismatic or interesting -without- being physically "beautiful/sexy/hot"). At least one characters that didn't seem to need the attractive feat also got it (Icon - the Horned God already gives out a hefty charisma bonus which fits in well with her "promiscuous when possessed by the party spirit" character hook). In case you're curious as published 6 out of the 15 female characters have attractive; giving it to all the people who should have it (and taking it away from Icon) would put you at 8/15.
*Can't stand Mindbender. She's probably the core villain in the setting and she has no personality or personality beyond "superpowered amoral killer wants to rule world". Ugh.
*And the secret is.... Several NPCs have a secret that is never defined. It's a pet peeve but I -loath- this in roleplaying supplements (White wolf did this once or twice, too. It was irritating then as well). I'm not buying a setting so I can make stuff up (even little stuff). You can give a menu of choices for bonus points but if you're writing a character for a book you need to come up with -something- for a backstory. Even if it's lame.
Calamity Jane does the opposite of this best (and shows why I don't buy the whole "but I'm empowering the reader!" thing). Interesting concise character background is made available, with comments on why it's there, how it could be changed and what the ramifications of the changes would be.
*Improbable characters. There are only two characters that I find intrinsically improbable. I like them both, but I think that if you introduced them into a game your players would at some point call for a coffee break to discuss the fact "there's no way that this character could exist and the world be the way it is"
--Phenom is a fantastic idea. But it's improbable that she could get the way that she is without getting torn apart by people with access to search engines (or the british tabloids). At least not without the assistance of some undefined benefactor or freakish streak of luck.
--Prophet should be able to solve 90% of the worlds problems in about 5 minutes. He's so absurdly ridiculously efficient at fixing stuff that he almost demands subversion (i.e. he's really an alien invader, or insane or what have you). The character is awesome for all that though.
[/sblock]
Chapter 6
Discusses possible campaigns, dishes out (lots) of extra rules. A bit of a hodgepodge. Overall it does a good job of pulling things together; though the vagueness does return the ideas here are at least a little bit more directed.
The first half is campaign ideas. Most of the suggested campaign summaries are extremely short. Some of the more interesting are an X-Files/Planetary (mostly Planetary) combo, a Delta Green/BPRD (secretly saving the world from the paranormals), and (of course) the obligatory Lovecraft shout out.
The second half deals with rules. Some like Power and Doubt and Power Surge show off the flexibility and simplicity of the system nicely; others (the hack on page 222 to turn Paragons into Godlike) aren't things I would personally use but are interesting to see. I'm glad they included the mass combat rules from Golden Age (even though I didn't need them I think they should be more widely available than they were before).
The system for changing society was appreciated, though I'm sure that I don't think forcing players to spend huge amounts of power points (50!) makes any sense at all. Isn't the point of an Authority-like-game* that you can change the world with your actions?
* = The authority is a comic book about superheroes who decide they should stop fussing about with super villains and just change the world. It's not the first time the idea was done, but it's one of the most popular (the Paragons book explicitly mentions it several times).
There is some decent GM advice and a good list of reading material (lots of comic books but others as well).
As a toolbox
Dead on target. Obviously some ideas are stronger or weaker than others, but there is excellent stuff here for setting a theme, defining the world and so forth. The good ideas are all Paragons ideas and the campaigns are all about the paragons world (i.e. do you want to play PL 6 government agents? PL 8 monster hunters? PL 10 superheroes? PL 12 gods?) as opposed to different settings.
As a setting
Another chapter that's difficult to review fairly. Since the whole book is, in effect, an extension of this chapter (hypothetical different ideas for building a paragons setting) having some material here for people who wanted to get a coherent setting (a hypothetical timeline, additional relationships between specific characters and groups) would have been good. But by it's own standards the chapter isn't supposed to be that, and it provides some good-if-simple wireframes you could use to hang a campaign on.
Summary
There is a great book here. If you're interesting in "post modern" (AKA bronze age AKA more realistic) comics there is a trove of excellent stuff to be found.
However it's -all- Paragons setting material. Everything else from the "toolbox" section is of lower quality; and the decision to toolboxize the Paragons material (not give it a coherent backstory, put everything into silos) robbed it of something. Having several different timelines, or one timeline with a couple of modules, or whatever would also have been fine. But the book has nothing really -- even for an experienced GM having to write an entire timeline and campaign history from scratch is a big proposition.
There are people at the ATT message boards who are probably already slavering to get started, and I expect that the hard-core fan-base that enthusiastically rewrites the DC universe in lovingly detailed 25 page threads is in hog heaven. But I don't think that your average GM really buys a setting book to get raw material for a setting. They want a setting. And, for whatever reason, GR decided not to provide that.
That along with the fact that anyone who wants to run the Paragons setting is going to have to grapple with the Imageria (either leaving it vague, completely re-writing it, or otherwise dealing with the fact that it's both dull and clashes painfully with the realistic genre) robs Paragons of what would have been an otherwise richly deserved 5th star.
Paragon's Review
This is a a review of the pdf.
Mutants and Masterminds in a sentence (or three)
Probably the most popular and successful superhero rpg now on the market. The system is constructed such that almost anything is possible (except for a few abilities that ruin everyone's fun). Given the relative level of complexity it plays simply with few die rolls (i.e. the complexity comes during prep time as opposed to during game time).
Overview
Paragons, the (at this point) long awaited new toolbox/campaign setting by Green Ronin is designed to enable you to create and run your own 'realistic superhero' (as they put it "normal people, paranormal power") game, as well as provide you with a full setting. The marketing blurb goes further claiming "multiple settings in one".
The book, while excellent, doesn't live up to the second blurb. The quality stuff in the book is all from one setting, the "Paragons setting". I found few ideas that were interesting but related to/from a 'different setting'; I'll get into it in more detail below but every time the book stops talking about the Paragon Setting it slips into a vague murk of half formed ideas. These sections aren't large, but their existence are one of two key factors that robbed the book of a 5th star. The other reason the book misses the final star is that, in trying to make the book modular, too much was taken out. The Paragons setting itself isn't complete; nor is there enough in the book to really build a complete setting without a fair amount of GM work.
My personal feeling is that the book would have worked better as two books. The Paragons Setting is extremely good. But weaker writing and an apparent inability to produce enough (read: much of any) interesting material that isn't related to the Paragons Setting material keeps the book from living up to its marketing.
It's hard not to think that, instead of trying to force it all into one schedule-busting project and rushing to get it ready by August GR would have done better to split it up; coming out with a shorter setting book in time for GenCon and pushing back the deadline for a second "toolbox" book until they had compelling material for it.
Review Approach
I'll try to look at each chapter from the standpoint of someone who wants a Setting (ala Freedom City, GR's existing super hero world) and as someone who wants a toolbox (i.e. to make their own setting).
What are the spoiler blocks in the review? They're for tichy/anal retentive comments. The sort of thing that is too pedantic to really go in a review. Their saving grace (other than giving me a chance to run my mouth even more) is that you -will- get a better idea about the book, or what I think about the book, from reading them.
I should also mention that when I refer to a character as being a "homage" or "clone" I mean it in a good way. If you've got a big strong savage monster dude with no other powers, besides his strength, he's basically the Hulk. So long as there is something interesting/new going on I dig it. There are a bunch of characters in the book like that, and I think they're awesome. (Except Raindance, but she's just one character).
Editing
Decent. Typos include
*mortal instead of mortar
*one character has a gather info font set wrong
*several (~4) female characters probably should have the attractive feat but don't
*a few sentences are awkward
*"degree of concentration" instead of "concentrations" (pg 221)
*"Might" instead of "mighty" (pg 29)
*"while military units" instead of "whole military units" (pg 27)
*The last line of Invincible Iron Whirlwind's description (pg 62) is probably missing the word "grant" or "has" somewhere.
That's just the stuff I picked up from my read through.
I'd put it around the " level of WotC products" (4 out of 5 probably); the errors don't really harm understanding but you wonder why nobody read it after they ran spellcheck.
Art
Similar or slightly weaker than MnM 2nd ed standards; I focused mostly on the character portraits, as they the most use in game, represent the largest proportion of the art (by far) as well as the best pieces, in my opinion at least.
There are a number of great pieces (Naga, Icon, Vom Stahl, Pontifex) as well several simpler pictures that really seemed to capture the character concept well (Decoy, Silas the Elder, Ugly Jake, Phenom). I actually imagined Silas completely differently, but the artist did a great job making "fat wizard" seem more interesting that you would think.
And there are a few character concepts that would seem to offer copious opportunities for cool art but the execution was "blah" (Ravana, Otherkin, the Necropolitan).
Art Quibbles
[sblock]
*The Patriot character shows up a lot (at least three places that I saw; including the cover). As his appearance/costume/background/personality are bland I thought this was a shame; especially given that MnM books have generally featured extremely strong homage cover work (see the award winning Ultimate Power). I understand why Patriot, the character, was constructed the way he was, but I think the book would be more eye-catching and appealing if you'd featured almost anyone else.
*Due to the nature of the book a relatively large amount of characters could be described as "normal people in street clothes". This doesn't bother me, per se. But at least two of these have appearances that don't match details in the text. Little stuff like "is going grey" or "her trademark outfit is all-white". Perversely this bothers me. I can understand fantasy art deviating a bit; if you're drawing something with a lot of limbs and eyes it's easy to see a "triangular eye" turning into a "diamond-shaped eye" . For completely normal and human character portraits I think you should either draw to match the text, or change the text (Arbiter doesn't need to be graying if his picture isn't, Phenom's trademark outfit can be yellow instead of white if the artist winds up drawing a yellow outfit).
*Randomly, the photo on page 211 looks like the PRA agent is trying to execute a baby/moster which is leaping from it's stroller at the agent.
I think that, in actuality, there is supposed to be a baby in the stroller that is being saved by the PRA. Maybe.
Anyway the first time I saw the picture I thought the monster had been riding in the baby carriage and jumped out at the agent... "John Woo's Newest Film: Attack of the Killer Mutant Babies".
[/sblock]
Chapter 1
A basic introduction, what are paragons (AKA superheroes), etc. As an introductory chapter it's simple, however it does it's job hitting on a few key points (some quite creative):
Default Paragons offers the following ideas:
0) the game is oriented toward PL 10 -- this is default for MnM but is honestly extremely powerful. Except for some limits on overall power, PL 10 characters (with 150 points) can do basically anything; are on par with, if not more powerful than, most every non-cosmic comic book character and much more powerful than a typical realistic setting (Wild Cards, Heroes, Watchmen). Initially I struggled with this, but I think it's a good choice [sblock]*it's new (in that virtually realistic settings have generally stuck with more limited power levels
*it matches existing MnM stuff (of which there is a lot of generally high quality)
* players -love- playing awesomely powerful characters
*Ultimately I think it offers maximal flexibility
i.e. dialing down is not so difficult but increasing power levels can be tricky (if Hellboy can sense forces of darkness the second they arrive on earth on earth, and teleport there a round later then the BPRD stories get a lot more boring) -- by starting at a high power level you're confident that the game can take the shocks that a party of PL 10 PCs can deliver[/sblock]
1) powers can't be identified easily, there are no physical differences (no "X-Gene", no "midiclorians") that identify paragons
2) certain kinds of powers product certain kinds of personalities, which in turn produce powers and create a sort of cycle (in some cases a vicious one). This is used to explain the prevalence of high-powered megalomaniacs (read: super-villains). Great Idea!
3) non-human paragons are handled reasonably well. Nobody knows what Aliens/Walk-ins/Avatars/Gods are, but they're wandering around anyway.
The relationship between psychology and power development (#2) is a relatively rich vein (a half dozen character ideas popped into my head just from reading the text, YMMV). I also liked the implications of super-powered people appearing normal. It's milked for all it's worth in later chapters, as it should be (it's a great idea).
As a toolbox
Good and on target. You get options, explanations of the options and a couple of plug and play ideas. I particularly liked the list of "random paragons with minor but useful powers" (the plus sized model character idea was particularly brilliant but they were all good).
As a setting
Decent. A proper setting intro would have included a discussion of key events and major actors (much like Freedom City included a discussion of its fallen "favored son" Centurion).
It's worth pointing out here that the Paragon's setting qua setting struggles only in one area: it doesn't have a proper history. It's supposed to be made up by the GM to match their own desires; there is talk about a "The Breakout" when super heroes appeared, but just a few general suggestions. Of course, since it's impossible to have a setting without having past events that have shaped it, it -does- have a history. But you have to dig it out of the character histories later (see Mindbender, Rampage, Prophet, the Evanston Incident, Vanguard, etc).
While this makes for interesting reading the first time through it's going to be hard for a GM later when they want to figure out when key events occurred and they're paging through 10 different backstories. A sidebar with this proto-history here (or somewhere else in the book) would have helped usability a lot.
As would just sucking it up and making an official history; since there's no "history toolbox" for building a setting history in the book it's not like you'd be invalidating something.
Chapter 2
But for Chapter 3 the weakest of the chapters.
This Chapter tries to delve into "realistic" superheroes material. It does a poor job. Various topics, (Religion, media, etc) are brought out, discussed for a few breezy paragraphs and then dropped.
It's OK to say obvious things like "the government might require paragons to register", "Famous paragons might be approached by companies to endorse their products" or "Mind reading is an invasion of someone's privacy" as long as the chapter is going to go somewhere with it (details that wouldn't be obvious, adventure arcs, story ideas, anything really). I could have handled a chapter that dealt with legal precedents regarding privacy, the game effects (or adventure hooks related to) product endorsement or how registration might work. But the chapter never tries to get beyond the level of vague fluff text.
There are a few good ideas floating around (newly-minted Paragons licensing the identities of existing comic book characters, "realistic comics", the ACME devices system*, the Philadelphia experiment) but nothing that warranted a chapter. These ideas could have been subsumed in a few text blocks somewhere.
*ACME devices are basically "impossible devices"; allowing the player to make them work (and buy these kinds of things normally) but limiting their ability to affect the game world. There is actually a scale for how this works which can vary by device (i.e. only works for you, only works for you and other paragons, anyone can use it but it can't be duplicated, etc.). Some suggestions allow further refinement, where the device does work... but the components involved shouldn't be able to handle the strain (so in 15 years when materials sciences catch up you will be able to have a world filled with flying cars, just not now). This is all basically just a way for the GM to control the impact of super-inventiveness on the game. It's (properly to my mind) left in the realm of GM fiat and allows games to feature super-advanced technology without having it affect the modern world.
Toolbox
On target but weak. If you're interested in running a game that includes superhuman registration, or privacy rights, you'll already have thought of everything the book brings up. ACME devices are interesting, of course, but already a sidebar.
Setting
Hard to comment meaningfully. The book waffles between meta-confusion (not having a clear idea what would happen) and in-game confusion (world religions are -sure- that... they have no idea what's going on). So the religious segments are technically useful (if uninteresting) while the other sections aren't really very useful, since you have to basically make it all up yourself and aren't given much in the way of tools to make that easier.
[sblock]
Would the Pope say -something- about Paragons? Issue some kind of statement? I think so. I haven't got the foggiest idea what he'd say, but he'd say something. Shadowrun, for example, made an attempt to grapple with this; there were a bunch of kinda vague rules for Catholics involving magic and addressing issues (i.e. do Orks have souls...) I don't think that the response would be "confusion". I just don't. Maybe my biases are showing through. I mean... I'm sure they weren't expecting things like abortion or condoms 200 years ago but the Pope and the Church have figured out what their stances are on this stuff. I think they'd make some kind of stance.
Ditto the other religions.
To my mind this is where a setting can really make a contribution to your game. Saying "the Christian reaction is as diverse as Christians are" is punting a hot potato back for the GM to deal with.[/sblock]
Chapter 3
It's rare that I like an idea more before I understand what it is; but that was the case here. I liked the Imageria more before I read the chapter about it. Reading through the other sections of the book you have images of a mysterious Other. Bizarre realms filled with a mixture of humanity's psychological detritus and alien energies. Hidden secrets available for those who can brave eldrich horrors. Bizarre platonic ideals warring and combining with the ur-forces that men call gods. You know, cool stuff.
At no point, until I actually read the chapter, did I expect paint-by-numbers mashup of Werewolf and DnD's cosmology with a few paragraphs (indirectly) invoking the Sandman comics. I'm not being snide, it's just blatant. 90% of it seems to have been pulled directly from Werewolf or the Manual of the Planes, and not even the interesting parts either.
[sblock]
To be specific:
The Imageria touches the real world sometimes; basically exactly the same way that the spirit world touches the real world in Werewolf (using the same terms even!). Then you have the ethereal realm (called the Border); just like the Ethereal in DnD. After that you have the Reaches and the Depths, which are a mash of different planes. You get the inner planes (slightly toned down, the realm of Fire is actually just a desert, but still has the city of brass); Faerie, the Dream, Godshome, Archeron (from Werewolf) and so forth. Then you have the Abyss, something else ported over from Werewolf (though in this case I think it's 1st edition), and then the Deep Realms which is where the unknowable face of god lives.
(The realistic superheroes game has a place where god sits? Yes yes it does. But don't worry. It's 'unknownable' and 'different for every visitor'. So we're still po-mo.)
[/sblock]
I'm not really sure why 1) GR/Kenson felt that they needed to write a short rehash of two existing game products 2) why they put it in their "realistic" superhero game.
Why go through the effort of making Glyph and the rest of the Pact so weird and unique just to turn around and say "yeah, and they're really just from a bland fantasy mulch".
It's also a bizarre spot to have dropped the toolbox method completely. There is no toolbox for this chapter. The Imageria is presented whole cloth in it's entirety. Not that you can't hack it apart of course and move things around, but if there was any chapter that would seem to call out for lots of different options (or at least some other option besides a default one) it would be this one.
[sblock]Having given it more thought last night, I'm thinking that they were trying to go for Fables. Fables is a brilliant comic about fairy tales who've escaped into the modern world. It's won lots of awards, its fantastic and fantasy but with a modern twist. Unfortunately what drove the Fables series was really the characters and stories. The mad-cap improbability of the physics of the place was constructed to allow maximal storytelling (where do Jack's Beans take him?). A GM can go a lot further with a bunch of random story ideas about what could happen in an impossible realm than with an "encyclopedia of places that don't fit with the theme of your game and your players won't want to go".[/sblock]
As a toolbox/Setting
There really isn't much in this chapter for a GM period, whatever you're trying to do. Unless you want to do high fantasy planecrawling. At which point you should get the Manual of the Planes (WotC).
[sblock]
Chapter 6 will briefly take up the struggle to make the Imageria seem interesting; it's apparently supposed to be a way for DMs to add a Fantastic Four/Challengers of the Unknown flavor to the game. I liked the Imageria after I'd read that but before I'd actually looked at Chapter 3. But even then there were signs of trouble. Specifically the two sample adventure ideas involving the Imageria campaign, the Imaginauts, don't actually involve the Imageria! One is "something came -back- with you" and the other is "Freedom City is in the Imageria!"; writing the second one takes a certain amount of balls, since they turn around and provide the same adventure idea in the 'Freedom City is in the Imageria!' Campaign a few pages later. When neither of the campaign hooks involve anything from the Imageria you get the feeling like the authors are just as lost as you are in trying to come up with something interesting; not a good feeling.
It's not that I hate the idea of the Imageria or anything like that. But if you haven't got any material for it you should just sock the chapter, make the Imageria a sidebar saying "we may put out a book later to give you ideas but just stick anything in there that works for your story" and leave it at that. As I've mentioned before there is enough material for Paragons overall to make a great book, cutting the page count down and focusing on the good stuff would have been a much better move.[/sblock]
Chapter 4
The book heads back to the Paragons setting here and starts to deliver. In-and-of-itself the chapter is a bit of a mixed bag, too many of the organizations (Foregone Conclusions, Harbingers, Gordon Technologies, PRA, the Inititative) feel a bit perfunctory, but
1) it forms a supporting framework for Chapter 5
2) is filled with lots of fiddly little mechanical bits that GMs love to have done for them (typical agents of various organizations, NPCs that don't really require a full write-up but do need stats), etc.
3) There are some stand out ideas
The standouts are MERLIN (a mix between google and Global Frequency), the "social/business networking" groups (Paramount Club/PPS) and Zero Latitude (I don't know why I like them, but I do).
Several other groups (the Pact, the Rosemont Center) are brought up to the level of awesome by the characters in the next chapter.
Vanguard, the Justice League/Avengers of the setting, never got interesting for me.
I'm, unreasonably, on the fence about the Pantheon, the idea is excellent, flexible and cool, but more NPCs and details would be necessary to seriously include them in a game. [sblock]I initially thought they got one NPC, Epicurus, but in fact Proteus' description indicates that he's their leader/patron, odd since the group description seems to suggest that they're lead by Gaia.
He also doesn't fit their motif at all.
(But you could fit the entire Teragen from Aberrant in here with space to spare, so it's not like you're lacking in options to fill them out if you have that material).[/sblock]
The Church of Jesus Christ, Paragon gave me some trouble originally but has grown on me. I think it's improbable that an Eastern Orthodox Church would wind up embracing Protestant-style mega-church marketing and call itself "the Church of Jesus Christ, Paragon". And, if were a self-ordained saint with superpowers and I knew about the Anti-Christ (or one of his servants) I would just denounce him to the world. Don't really see him covering up for the guy. But it is what it is and it's good for all that.
The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers
[sblock]Oh and the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers are here. Yeah, I was initially appalled (Japanese people named Danny Rock*; Kyoto is both a prefecture and a city, but the prefecture doesn't have a mayor; terrible code names that sound like they came from poorly translated subtitles of old Hong Kong Kung-fu movies) -- however on reflection I think it's supposed to be that way. I mean... the power rangers? it's supposed to be absurdly unrealistic and campy, right? One of the guys regeneration powers is actually laugh-out-loud over the top.
So while it doesn't really belong in anything like a "realistic game" it's profoundly, improbably weird and I'm inclined to give it a hearty thumbs up on those grounds alone.
In all honesty, if you're going to market a book as "many settings in one" you need lots of these, appealing-to-somebody/utterly insane/contradictory-but-stimulating type ideas. The fact that this is the only idea/set of characters/group that wouldn't easily fit into the default Paragon's setting suggests that they didn't have time to really come up with anything beyond the Paragon's setting.
* = The contributor to the book has pointed out that the last name is spelled Rokku. Which is both true and how you would write the sound for "Rock" in Roma-ji. I personally couldn't introduce a Japanese guy named Danny Rock as the media director of the Power Rangers to my players without them assuming I was aiming for satire. Personally I think satire rocks but your millage, as always, may vary.
[/sblock]
As a toolbox
Excellent. The organizations are modular and simple (i.e. built around a core theme). There is a good balance between detail and generality. By focusing on roles and basically skipping relationships between different agencies you have maximum flexibility.
As a setting
The organizations are basically unconnected to each other. A reasonable job is done here (and in Chapter Six) explaining their roles and how they're related. But they have no connected history really. So the setting suffers from the decision not to include any of that.
But bland vagueness of the previous chapters is mostly gone and the flavor and color of the better organizations begins to help create the image of a setting (if not a setting itself).
Nitpick
[sblock]
One organization has a "secret structure" hidden within it. I appreciate that something like that has been included but this one is so baroque as to verge on the laugh-out-loud absurd. It seems improbable that, given that this organization was created after superheroes appears (in the Paragons setting less than ten years ago) could possible have created this many hidden levels of initiation with funny titles, super-advanced databases, weird voting procedures etc.
Especially since there are no founders or creators of the system. It's just presented without explanation. It is a neat system/idea so I think it's a good inclusion, but I can't see anyone with the brains and determination to set it up actually setting it up this way. Anyway some sort of founder should have been included IMHO.
The contributor responded to the comment about this structure here.
[/sblock]
Chapter 5
The meat of the book really. Everything flows into this chapter and most everything good comes out of it.
It's the longest chapter (100+ pages), has the most creative ideas and is the most mechanically detailed as well.
Though it's not explicitly mentioned the characters conform to one of several broad types:
[Naturally these lines are naturally arbitrary and vague; Proxy would work extremely well in a straight super-powered game, for example. Calamity Jane is on the edge of business people and super hero. I'm just doing this to give you an idea of what's in there without spoiling too much.]
1. Encounter characters (Crybaby/Lullaby, The Burning Man, Logar, the Ghost, the House that Hate Built, Unifier). These encounters are in the X-Files vein; basically a mini-adventure in the form of a character with "spooky powers" that produce a crisis for the PCs to solve.
2. Super-powered business people (Network, Blueshift, the Arbiter, the Answer, the Gourmand, Proxy, maybe Calamity Jane). These characters are the embodiment of "Heroes but turned up to 11" (i.e. PL 10)
3. Superheroes and villains (Vanguard, the Rosemont Center, their foes and a few similar characters (two "all-american" superheroes, a batman clone, a PL8 wannabe hero) and few miscellaneous characters.
4. Characters from superhero comics -- i.e. the Kingpin or Lex Luthor aren't really super-villains, neither Oracle nor John Constantine are a superhero but they live in a comic book world. This section is probably close to half the chapter -- it includes the not insubstantial number of 'magic' characters, as well as a whole gamut of conspirators, party animals, an Indian Jones clone, a Laura Croft clone, a(nother) Hulk clone, the bitter hero-hunting fan, superpowered mobsters, and so on.
It's hard to avoid gushing. I'll just say that the characters are generally excellent in concept and, as has been characteristic of MnM products in the past, care is taken in the text to highlight fiddly bits of certain difficult mechanics in plain language.
Honestly I felt that the book is worth owning just for these hundred pages.
Interestingly a number of characters seem to be "two different iterations of the same idea". I'm thinking specifically of Icon/Otherkin, Alpha Male/the Patriot, Mr. Zero/Impostor/Proxy, Prophet/17, Rampage/Rojas, Luminary/Vom Stal, and Calamity Jane/Valkyrie. Initially this was a bit jarring but the implementations are different enough mechanically and in terms of story to stand on their own; in fact the idea's grown on me tremendously.
[sblock]
Here's why the idea grew on me:
1. If paragons are tapping into ideas/platonic ideals/segments of the godhead from the Imageria then it makes sense that people would wind up tapping into the same thing. This could form the backup of a whole campaign.
2. You get very interesting dichotomies. I can see Calamity Jane and Valkyrie meeting periodically for coffee, or hating each other. Ditto almost everyone else. People love Thing/Hulk fights; Rampage vs Rojas would be equally cool. Maybe Luminary and Vom Stal lost their memories (and are both combat leaders of their respective teams) for a reason? The players are likely to find both Alpha Male and Patriot frustrating, but having both around allows the GM to contrast the two characters and the choices people make.
3. As I said before the characters are different; specifically in terms of their motivations; so they're unlikely to "feel" the same.
[/sblock]
Overall there are just some brilliant characters floating around in here. I was particularly taken with Icon (everyone who posts about this book seems to like her), Ugly Jake, Enigma, Prophet, Calamity Jane, Rojas, Proxy, and the Unifier.
In the interests of balance I should say that
*I was underwhelmed by Dire Straits, Luminary and Raindance. (As mentioned elsewhere Mindbender irritates me immensely.) Four characters aren't much of course.
Raindance
[sblock](she's a -direct- port of a character from Gen13; as I said above homages are fine, but you need to do something new. Raindance really just is Sarah Rainmaker. If you're going to clone a relatively distinct character, the only Native American lesbian character in comics (with a stereotypically Native-Americans-are-close-to-nature power set), I think you're under obligation to do something novel.[/sblock]
*The "encounter characters" as a group also didn't particularly inspire me, but I can see why they're included and they are a valuable mechanical tool for showing GMs who want to run their own games how to construct those sorts of encounters.
As a toolbox
In terms of being a toolbox it's out-of-the-park 6 stars. The characters are generally constructed to sit alone, or in a silo with a few other linked characters (members of the same team/faction). Several lynch-pin characters (Patriot and Proteus) actually have menus of possible backgrounds; Calamity Jane does them one better by having an interesting and evocative background with a number of different ways it can be subverted or altered. Overall quality is high and each description includes a "uses for <character name>" section that highlights different roles the character could play in the game. I wouldn't personally want to run a game focusing on "Icon as a sexual predator" but I think it shows that the Green Ronin was thinking and trying to push boundaries a bit by including some offbeat stuff.
Likewise the "two characters with similar ideas" enhances the toolbox-like-nature of the book. Like 17 but want him to have better precognitive powers? Look at Prophet. Want Calamity Jane to have battle armor? Look at Valkyrie.
You can nit-pick, and I will below, but it's really solid gold.
As a setting
This chapter is so rich with convoluted ideas that it's 5 star as setting material. But again the toolbox approach hampers the development of a cohesive setting a bit. Freedom City benefited from very tight relationships between the characters, both heroes and villains. While a few characters get a sentence or two (Alpha Male wants to join Vanguard) there is no attempt to tie it all together. Who came first? Who motivated who?
So much more could be built out of the fertile ground of this chapter. This may be addressed in a future book (and there will certainly be long and intricate fan-worlds on the ATT boards in any case) but the flirtation with a setting qua setting in the form of a proto-history woven through certain character's backgrounds comes up short.
Nitpicks
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As with any chapter this rich I have nitpicks and opinions. Don't take this as anything more than geekish parsing.
*There are also a lot of shapechangers. There are several different ways to achieve shapechanging-type-effects in MnM and the characters are mechanically diverse, but I count 6ish shapechangers (4 of which are conspirators) and a bunch of other mind controllers. Since the game is supposed to enable an x-files/heroes mystery component it's not terrible. But it seemed like a lot to me.
*Hot rich chicks! "She is the extremely beautiful and gifted daughter of a family of great wealth" -- there are four female characters with this background (Dumont, Empress, Mindbender,
*The attractive feat and female characters. There is a feat in MnM to designate a character is attractive (it gives social skill bonuses vs. the opposite sex). A lot of female characters seem like they should have it but don't. This has cropped up once or twice before in MnM books (notably Freedom City with Tesla Atom); but it's particularly bad here. If a character, invariably female, is described as being "beautiful" in their character description, particularly if it's mentioned repeatedly and or used to explain something (they have an online fan club, they frequently take use their appearance to take advantage of males, their character is "learning what it means to be rich and beautiful", etc. etc.), they ought to have attractive. MnM products are generally fastidious about getting these sorts of mechanical details correct so it feels weird when someone is described as "having male fanclubs world-wide" but doesn't have the feat. Specifically talking about (Bodyshop, Calamity Jane, Ponitfex). Since a lot is made (at least on the Internet) about how the female body is portrayed in comics I can understand wanting to avoid giving it out too freely; but then drop it from the character all together (or -gasp- describe them as being charismatic or interesting -without- being physically "beautiful/sexy/hot"). At least one characters that didn't seem to need the attractive feat also got it (Icon - the Horned God already gives out a hefty charisma bonus which fits in well with her "promiscuous when possessed by the party spirit" character hook). In case you're curious as published 6 out of the 15 female characters have attractive; giving it to all the people who should have it (and taking it away from Icon) would put you at 8/15.
*Can't stand Mindbender. She's probably the core villain in the setting and she has no personality or personality beyond "superpowered amoral killer wants to rule world". Ugh.
*And the secret is.... Several NPCs have a secret that is never defined. It's a pet peeve but I -loath- this in roleplaying supplements (White wolf did this once or twice, too. It was irritating then as well). I'm not buying a setting so I can make stuff up (even little stuff). You can give a menu of choices for bonus points but if you're writing a character for a book you need to come up with -something- for a backstory. Even if it's lame.
Calamity Jane does the opposite of this best (and shows why I don't buy the whole "but I'm empowering the reader!" thing). Interesting concise character background is made available, with comments on why it's there, how it could be changed and what the ramifications of the changes would be.
*Improbable characters. There are only two characters that I find intrinsically improbable. I like them both, but I think that if you introduced them into a game your players would at some point call for a coffee break to discuss the fact "there's no way that this character could exist and the world be the way it is"
--Phenom is a fantastic idea. But it's improbable that she could get the way that she is without getting torn apart by people with access to search engines (or the british tabloids). At least not without the assistance of some undefined benefactor or freakish streak of luck.
--Prophet should be able to solve 90% of the worlds problems in about 5 minutes. He's so absurdly ridiculously efficient at fixing stuff that he almost demands subversion (i.e. he's really an alien invader, or insane or what have you). The character is awesome for all that though.
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Chapter 6
Discusses possible campaigns, dishes out (lots) of extra rules. A bit of a hodgepodge. Overall it does a good job of pulling things together; though the vagueness does return the ideas here are at least a little bit more directed.
The first half is campaign ideas. Most of the suggested campaign summaries are extremely short. Some of the more interesting are an X-Files/Planetary (mostly Planetary) combo, a Delta Green/BPRD (secretly saving the world from the paranormals), and (of course) the obligatory Lovecraft shout out.
The second half deals with rules. Some like Power and Doubt and Power Surge show off the flexibility and simplicity of the system nicely; others (the hack on page 222 to turn Paragons into Godlike) aren't things I would personally use but are interesting to see. I'm glad they included the mass combat rules from Golden Age (even though I didn't need them I think they should be more widely available than they were before).
The system for changing society was appreciated, though I'm sure that I don't think forcing players to spend huge amounts of power points (50!) makes any sense at all. Isn't the point of an Authority-like-game* that you can change the world with your actions?
* = The authority is a comic book about superheroes who decide they should stop fussing about with super villains and just change the world. It's not the first time the idea was done, but it's one of the most popular (the Paragons book explicitly mentions it several times).
There is some decent GM advice and a good list of reading material (lots of comic books but others as well).
As a toolbox
Dead on target. Obviously some ideas are stronger or weaker than others, but there is excellent stuff here for setting a theme, defining the world and so forth. The good ideas are all Paragons ideas and the campaigns are all about the paragons world (i.e. do you want to play PL 6 government agents? PL 8 monster hunters? PL 10 superheroes? PL 12 gods?) as opposed to different settings.
As a setting
Another chapter that's difficult to review fairly. Since the whole book is, in effect, an extension of this chapter (hypothetical different ideas for building a paragons setting) having some material here for people who wanted to get a coherent setting (a hypothetical timeline, additional relationships between specific characters and groups) would have been good. But by it's own standards the chapter isn't supposed to be that, and it provides some good-if-simple wireframes you could use to hang a campaign on.
Summary
There is a great book here. If you're interesting in "post modern" (AKA bronze age AKA more realistic) comics there is a trove of excellent stuff to be found.
However it's -all- Paragons setting material. Everything else from the "toolbox" section is of lower quality; and the decision to toolboxize the Paragons material (not give it a coherent backstory, put everything into silos) robbed it of something. Having several different timelines, or one timeline with a couple of modules, or whatever would also have been fine. But the book has nothing really -- even for an experienced GM having to write an entire timeline and campaign history from scratch is a big proposition.
There are people at the ATT message boards who are probably already slavering to get started, and I expect that the hard-core fan-base that enthusiastically rewrites the DC universe in lovingly detailed 25 page threads is in hog heaven. But I don't think that your average GM really buys a setting book to get raw material for a setting. They want a setting. And, for whatever reason, GR decided not to provide that.
That along with the fact that anyone who wants to run the Paragons setting is going to have to grapple with the Imageria (either leaving it vague, completely re-writing it, or otherwise dealing with the fact that it's both dull and clashes painfully with the realistic genre) robs Paragons of what would have been an otherwise richly deserved 5th star.
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