Maybe going back to M&M 2e????

[AsmodeusDM]

Picked up DCA at Gencon and have been playing it weekly ever since... and for the most part it just doesn't feel as... good?... as 2ndE M&M.

For starters we are constantly are referring back to the old 2nd edition book because we find the book to be more concise and easy to follow.

Secondly, in our games I am using a lot of 2nd edition rules anyways (such as: I still award Hero Points for getting owned hard, for making funny comments, for Villians "getting" a hero point, etc.)

I don't know.. I was never a big DC fan.. but I'm just not sure after 2 months of playing it.. that I really like the changes made in DCA/3rd E.

How about the rest of you? Has anyone really found their games have gotten a lot better in 3e?

[Paragon]

How about the rest of you? Has anyone really found their games have gotten a lot better in 3e?

I haven't played/run yet, but I'm actually slipping the other way; I was rather resistant at first because, much as I liked many of the changes, some of them annoyed me considerably. I'm now starting to conclude the few I can't easily houserule (and I had plenty of 2e houserules too) I can live with.

[charlieluce]

So far I've run three sessions of 3e and all in all I'm liking it better than 2e, though I'm still getting used to all the little changes.

I plan on running for at least six months (a dozen sessions) before I do much of anything in the way of house rules. I used to be house rule happy but I think it began to interfere with my really understanding the system I was running when I was so eager to tinker with it.

[Dr.Nova]

I've been playing DCA since it's launch and the first 10 session that I held were testing out the rules written as is. Over-all, I've seen that the few problems I had with the newer rules could easily be house-ruled to my group's liking or just tolerated because they serve a purpose. In fact, I have less house rules in the 3e system than I did in the 2e because they did fix a lot of the problems that came with the older model.

Honestly, if you like 2e more, stick with it because having fun is all that matters. I will say that expecting 3e to blow 2e out of the water is going to let a lot of people down. Because the two are so similar, picking up 3e from years of 2e didn't really feel new and exciting to me, just different. Different in this case is still good, but your not going to recapture that awe-inspiring "first time feeling" that is associated with any recreational activity you enjoy.

Btw, I really don't get your take on Hero Points being house-ruled. The bottom right corner of pg 21 of DCA spells out that PCs earn HPs for "Complications, Acts of Heroism and Good Role-playing", which should translate to everything you gave as an example:

Secondly, in our games I am using a lot of 2nd edition rules anyways (such as: I still award Hero Points for getting owned hard, for making funny comments, for Villians "getting" a hero point, etc.)

[saint_matthew]

Picked up DCA at Gencon and have been playing it weekly ever since... and for the most part it just doesn't feel as... good?... as 2ndE M&M.

For starters we are constantly are referring back to the old 2nd edition book because we find the book to be more concise and easy to follow.

Secondly, in our games I am using a lot of 2nd edition rules anyways (such as: I still award Hero Points for getting owned hard, for making funny comments, for Villians "getting" a hero point, etc.)

I don't know.. I was never a big DC fan.. but I'm just not sure after 2 months of playing it.. that I really like the changes made in DCA/3rd E.

How about the rest of you? Has anyone really found their games have gotten a lot better in 3e?

Thats a bit of a tricky question because i was in the same boat when i first picked it up. I would say, dont judge MnM 3E by DCA standards. As much as i like DCA i also had problems with it. Stat wise i disliked the loss of skills, but i quickly got over that when i realized that i could simply insert the old skill list & bring 1 point upto equalling 4 skill points if i felt it was neccessary (in the end we didn't bother as skills aren't as important in a super hero game as a fantasy game).

As for the powers i agree that it doesn't feel as much fun to flick through them. I personally hope they put all the placeholder powers back into the MnM book for conveniences sake.

Essentially 3E & 2E are almost exactly the same game, with only the smallest of changes (many changes are just moving where things are on a character sheet & then renaming them). I personally dont think it warranted a new edition, but i think GR needed to put MnM back into the public view (see this is what happens when you don't publish adventures to keep peoples interest).

-M

[poodle]

never left 2E, no regrets. The only thing that ticks me off is a lot of the PbP is using DCA.

[J'sinOwl]

I never left 2e either, but I took most of what I liked in 3e and dropped it into my already heavily modified 2e game. Heavily modified not because I think 2e is broken, but because I'm using it to run a game in a very specific genre.

[Paragon]

So far I've run three sessions of 3e and all in all I'm liking it better than 2e, though I'm still getting used to all the little changes.

I plan on running for at least six months (a dozen sessions) before I do much of anything in the way of house rules. I used to be house rule happy but I think it began to interfere with my really understanding the system I was running when I was so eager to tinker with it.

Yeah, I've kind of gotten the same way; you'll note the only house rule I walked in with for Freedom's Children were all a cluster relating to knockback, which 3e doesn't really support at all. Rest of it I'm leaving alone until it shows a problem (and with the frequency with which I'm expecting to run FC, that may not be for a long time--you'll probably hit them before I do).

(Of course I suppose the way I'm going to handle fiat could be considered a houserule too..)

[rstehwien]

I hadn't run 2E in about 2 years and recently started a M&M game (promising my group to run nothing else for at least 1 year... trying to cure my GM ADD syndrome). I spent some time trying to decide between 2E and 3E and finally went with 3E. There seemed to be enough I liked in 3E to get over the things I didn't and I reserved the right to pour some 2E stuff into 3E (patching 3E with 2E seemed a shorter path to get what I liked from 3E).

Every once in a while I think "would it have been easier to take what I want from 3E"? I really like the 3E degrees of success, affliction, simple use of circumstance bonuses, PL limits and tradeoffs, and much more. But some changes in 3E I don't like, some changes I'm not sure about, much isn't well explained, and I have a TON of 2E stuff that requires some work to port over. Most painful is not using some of my 2E material. Been long enough since running 2E that some changes are invisible to me.

Still I've enjoyed running the few sessions and will give it a while before doing any serious changes. Added a few house rules already because I could see that some of the things I needed house rules for in 2E hadn't changed in 3E.

[FuzzyBoots]

Eh, I'm with the others in that there's not so much things broken in 3E (other than obvious things like Impervious and Skills) but I don't feel that there's not so much fixed either. *shrug* For me, it's not worth the hassle of switching until I have to. I figure there will continue to be 2E games for a while and after that, there's always offline play.

*shrug* I've been the same way for a lot of things in life. My main gaming system is still a PS2. Almost every game I play on my PC is 4-5 years old at this point. There's just too much good stuff already available to get to the hassle and expense of doing a minor upgrade to the latest version.

[orphan81]

I've found I vastly prefer 3E after I came to the conclusion it's simply a better version of Champions.

The Power Rules are more flexible then 2E and allow you to build any type of character you can conecive of. Having all of the basic combat feats usable by all characters up to a +2 was also a great idea.. and The "Recover" Action allows Heroes to get back into the Fight after getting staggered once.

About the only thing I house Rule, is giving an extra few Power Points purely for Skills for starting characters.

[Titan]

I am about to show the DCA game off to my group. Overall, I think it is a cleaner, leaner game. When I first read the stats for GL, I had TONS of doubts. What I am seeing now is an improved game.

I would like to see the M&M 3E rules, and wish that they were out ahead of December. I do hope that book has some conversion ideas in it, especially for Paragons.

[GothicSilencer]

I haven't had a chance to run it yet, but I've read through DCA. The only reason I haven't started running a game is that my players refuse to support the DC universe and are waiting until december for MnM 3e. One thing I think they did WAY better than 2e is Ability Scores. I've even ported the new DCA/MnM 3e ability score rules into the Pathfinder games I run. No one cares about ability SCORES in DnD/MnM 2e, they ONLY care about ability MODS. I'm happy that there's finally a system out that gets rid of the score vs mod mechanic without switching to a d10 or d6 based game.

Kudos to you, 3rd edition!

P.S. Congrats for allowing Fortitude/Will to be Defences without sucking all the fun out of SAVES the way 4th edition DnD did.

[Paragon]

universe and are waiting until december for MnM 3e. One thing I think they did WAY better than 2e is Ability Scores. I've even ported the new DCA/MnM 3e ability score rules into the Pathfinder games I run. No one cares about ability SCORES in DnD/MnM 2e, they ONLY care about ability MODS. I'm happy that there's finally a system out that gets rid

That's a carry-over from what SK did in True20, which also uses the mods rather than the scores, and for the same reason; the scores themselves are, essentially meaningless, and in a build system you're unlikely to ever see the meaningless part of the scores.

[Grayson]

I finally got to go through 3rd Edition. I'm kinda mixed. Frankly, I will probably stick to 2nd. I'm not a fan of the changes to the skill system among other things. However, I do like the Measurements table (kinda reminds me of MEGS). I also like a few other things, like how the Morph power was changed. That being said, not many of the things that I didn't care much for in 2nd Edition were changed, including things that I changed with house rules or used optional rules from other books (Mastermind's Manual and Wild Cards). I don't know. 3rd Edition feels kinda dumbed down to me. Just my two cents.