Beginner's Guide to Cosmic Heroism

Creating your character

During session zero, and over Discord chat afterwards, we'll work out the concept for your character. Once we're settled I'll build you a character from ground up to order if you want. If you're up for the heavy lifting of character building in M&M, by all means go for it! I can help with that as well so you don't get stuck or overwhelmed. I like to double check everyone's characters to make sure they'll be fun to play long term. I like to start at power level 8. It's strong enough to get wild with powers and is a nice foundation to grow from.

Preparing for the session

We'll use Roll20 free edition to start, so having an account there is a must. I have a Discord server I'd love to get everyone into for in game chat and between game planning. If we can't get everyone into Discord we'll have to do audio through Roll20 itself, which can be a bit crunchy. I am not a stickler for digital dice rolling, so if you like real dice feel free to get those out. I recommend printing your sheets on paper if you have the ink. M&M sheets don't change that much over time, so a note pad and pencil are more than enough to keep your in game action up to date from game to game

What Don brings to the table

Mutants and Masterminds has rule of cool built right into the system, so combats get pretty wild and showy. I lean into that a lot with loads of action description and color commentary. I'll have maps and settings prepared, all the usual VTT stuff, and if you get me some character pics in advance, some tokens to match. I'll make your sheets to order, of course, and provide some handy cheat sheets for basic M&M actions and heroic feats, conditions and skills for your reference. I do not have a particularly strong ear for music, so at most I'll provide some YouTube links to "hour long heroic fantasy" and "2 hour fantasy combat (no vocals)". I tend to get very distracted when trying to manage music playlists in game, but if any player has the knack for it I gladly pass that task to them.

Homebrew rules

I do power point spending at milestones, level up style. Makes book keeping easier and everyone gets to geek out at once. I stretch the hero point and luck refreshes over two to four sessions, a small story arc's worth. Helps make downtime hero points last, and we can cliffhanger mid encounter without resetting. I like to let summoned creatures act immediately in initiative order right after their summoner's turn, rather on the following round, since encounters can be quite short sometimes. I also like to give everything the move by action advantage for free. Move by action is essentially the movement rules from D&D 5E, and after playing that way it's hard to imagine going back.

How Don creates a safe table

During session zero I'll give you all my lines and veils, and if you have some of your own you can either tell the group or sling them to me in a private message if you need to keep things on the down low. During the game if things are getting to intense for some reason, you can call a red card out loud and we'll dial it down, or you can send me a DM that just says red card and I'll steer things away from that topic without outing you to the group. You could also do yellow card and I'll wrap up the scene slower and keep things from getting any more intense than they are. In both cases I'll make a note of the topic carded and check in after the game to make sure I've got the subject right so we can steer around it in the future.